ABS & DSC light on **UPDATE**

[TerminatorX5]

Hello folks - long time no postings... I was transferring from country to country, the car was in shipment, so i had no car for some time. Now I have my car, business as usual... or, almost as usual...

Now I am posted in Russia, and the car came from nice Costa Rica to nice, but very COLD Russia. Temperatures around here are considerably lower then what it used to be in Costa Rica - at one point we had negative 20 celcius. Luckily, the car is generally parked inside a heated garage but when we are out and about, sometimes I have to park outside...

Long story short, not to blame the cold weather but couple days ago I got a light show on the cluster:

The DSC light is on
The ABS light is on
The temperature gauge is all the way to the right, while the actual temperature is OK
The speedometer and tachometer are both dead
The miles are not clocking as the car is moving, in other words, I can drive a mile or a hundred miles and it is not registering
The fuel gauge seems to be ok
The gear selector display is greyed out, not showing selection of forward or reverse gears, while the car is moving forward or back in accordance with the shift lever
The PDC control is no activating when the gear is in reverse but is working fine in manual mode
The oil temperature gauge is all the way to the right and when it is to the right, the word BRAKE is lit up, then occasionally, the oil gauge is flipping all the way to the left and the BRAKE word is out
SERVICE ENGINE SOON light comes on periodically along with message FAILSAFE TRANSMISSION PROGRAM, the tach needle comes to live and moves up to the idle position and does not respond to actual speed of engine. When SERVICE ENGINE SOON light is out, the tach is dead again

The fault codes are P1747, P0600 and P0720

All of the above makes me think that the ABS module is gone south or maybe it is just one of the speed sensors. Taking the car to an official stealer is out of question, this is Moscow, and even a cheap brand as BMW commands stratospheric prices... Good thing, there are Indys everywhere, since everyone can afford a bimmer... The car of choice is obviusly a MayBach, a Bentley or an RR...

Anyway, this is not a DIY project, so I will keep you posted on what these symptoms were pointing to...

Happy Holidays!!!

[Weasel]

It sounds to me like the instrument cluster went south. All the problems you are experiencing rely on the cluster to decipher the signals, and the cluster is the middle man between the DSC module and the wheel speed sensor used for speedometer/odometer.

[TerminatorX5]

if the cluster is going south - it is a bad news...

update- today i drove about 40 miles, and i was treading lightly in the 4 to 6 inches of snow on the back roads and then through the slush on the highways... I have winter tires but I got no DSC function nor the ABS function - tested both, confirmed their absense... As I was going home, the car went into completely normal mode - I had the DSC, the ABS, no light show on the cluster, just the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light...

about half an hour into the drive I felt that the something changed inside the cars drivetrain, it was rather a subtle change, that otherwise I would not have noticed but since I was on a lookout for something bad, I felt it... and almost instantly i got the light show on the cluster again... so, i treaded lightly home...

hopefully I would be able to take the car to an Indy tomorrow, see what he has to say... the steering felt less of a power steering as well...

Oh, by the way, the cluster itself was replaced couple years ago by the BMW NA under a goodwill program, where I paid for the labor and the company picked up the tab for the parts...

[Weasel]

In that case I'd bring it back to the same dealer for diagnosis. Not only should the dealer do a better job diagnosing it as they have proper equipment and better knowledge of the system, but there is a two year parts warranty on it so if it is just at/under two years it would be completely covered.

with the last 7 of your VIN I should be able to look up how long ago it was done.

[TerminatorX5]

LN78208

It is not possible to take the car back to the original dealer in Pennsylvania, as both, me and the car are in the Russian Federation, not in the US... Come to think about it, I think it was more than 2 years but I still would like to see what you can dig up on my VIN... Are you connected to a dealers' network? This is amazing... I wonder if the oil changes in Latin America would come up on my VIN as well...

I am taking the car to an Indy today, we'll see what he has to say...

[Weasel]

I am a dealer tech, so yes I'm in the network. Only the warranty repairs (which goodwill is considered) done in the US will show up on the report. And that stopped back in 2006 for yours unfortunately, nothing of any relevance to this problem showed up.

Hopefully the indy shop has a GT1 tester and plenty of knowledge/experience with the systems on the beemers... good luck!

[TerminatorX5]

The Indy said that the ABS module is not talking to the bus, so this is the bad module. After reading on the Bosch units, it seems that the tiny connectors on the circuit board become "dislodged" or otherwise disconnected from the one of the soldering points and thus creating a havoc on the electronic system. This possibly might be due to extreme cold weather, even though I thought that a car made by Germans should be able to withstand harsh winters of good ol' Europe... But on the other hand, the slew of dead batteries in the winter would prove me wrong on this assumption anyway...

To repair the system, it would cost about 6000 rubles, which is about $200, but the catch is, I have to remove the unit either myself, or have someone else remove it for me. If, after repair is done, there no life in the module, there is no charge for the attemp and a used working unit runs about 12000 rubles, which is about $400, which is still better than a $1200 unit from a dealer.

the car is operational with electronic module taken off, I just need to figure out how to remove the ABS module, without destroying half of the car. I saw some nice write ups on ABS removal, so I will need to follow them up - it is just too freaking cold to work outside, and the garage is so tiny, that I can not fit myself in front of the car when the roll-up door is closed... I'll need to figure something out, I can't be driving like that too long, I need the ABS and the DSC on these slippery roads...

[TerminatorX5]

Last update

Took the car to an Indy, this time a different one. He ran a computer thingie, ABS did not talk to the rest of the system. At this point he presented two options: try to repair the original unit, and, if not repairable, replace it with a used one. He was going to take the unit out and put it back into the car.

so, he took the old one out, spent couple hours with it, and - voila!!! it is working!!!

So, at this point, the business is usual, the car operates as designed, the cluster is ok, the transmission is fine,no warning messages (except for burnt light bulb)