Maintenance indicator

[TheLazer]

Hey everyone - X5 newbie here. My girlfirend has a 2005 X5 with navigation and the gauge cluster has the maintenance indicator shown
with color bars. I think my girlfriends is defective. It constantly shows
three or four squares in the center and then partial outlines on the left and right.

I have never seen the "oil service" or "inspection" text on the dash where it is shown in the manual. If someone could post a picture of their car with this setup at startup, it would be much appreciated.

Adam

[tcn2k]

Something related to this. My car is an 05 and has about 6k+ on it. The indicator goes down to 3 squares now. Does the 05 now take into account oil change intervals for yearly rather then miles as well?

[JCL]

Originally Posted by tcn2k

Something related to this. My car is an 05 and has about 6k+ on it. The indicator goes down to 3 squares now. Does the 05 now take into account oil change intervals for yearly rather then miles as well?

No, it is strictly based on fuel consumed, which is related to mileage.

[tcn2k]

hmm, so i have 6k on my car, why did my 4 squares now indicate only 3? Does each one is roughly be around 4k per square? So 4 squares x 4k = 16k miles before oil change roughly speaking?

How many squares before it reaches zero mileage wise?

[AutoXer]

Originally Posted by tcn2k

hmm, so i have 6k on my car, why did my 4 squares now indicate only 3? Does each one is roughly be around 4k per square? So 4 squares x 4k = 16k miles before oil change roughly speaking?

How many squares before it reaches zero mileage wise?

My first oil service was at 13,500 miles, but that's with quite a bit of city driving. So 15,000 to 16,000 is probably about right for normal driving.

[dkl]

That's normal. Each one of those green bar (light) represents 650 liters of fuel consumed. So 5 x 650 = 1350 liters of fuel needed to be consumed before you'll see a yellow light (service time). 1350 liters translate into approximately 859 gallons. So, if you're doing mostly highway and averaged about 20 mpg, then expect to see your first yellow light to come on at 859 x 20 = 17,180 miles! That's roughly 3,436 miles driven per green light!

[pm_wizard]

dkl,

Thank you for the explanation. For some reason I had never related the service indicator to actual fuel consumption. I had thought it was a more complex equation, but this is actually quite logical.

John