Is there any sign of a SIB for Excessive Battery Discharge?

[emcman]

Originally Posted by FunfDreisig

Unfortunately diagnosing the real cause of an intermittent electrical problem is much more difficult than telling the customer that they just don't drive their E70 enough to keep the battery charged.

Funf Dreisig

Wait on that one. Monday pick up SUV with new battery and sunroof module which was the trouble this time (they thought). Drive to work and back and lunch Tuesday. Drive to work Wednesday get in SUV to drive home and high battery drain contol message. This is more than drive time. They know all that information and they told me how long my last 100 trips were. If you are ober 5 miles a day it should not be an issue. I do not use Bluetoothin the SAV which is thought to be another issue and always and always lock the car which put it to sleep in theory.

I am on my second dealer in town as the first really was poor. There are only two. They have a high rating but it seems like no suppoprt on issues like this.

I do have a trickle charger and have had for some. That is how I get it up enough to get it to the dealer sometimes. However plugging a car in evry other day or evnery day masks the issue and does not help at all when you want to drive away from home overnight and worry if you will get back.

[emcman]

Originally Posted by X5 Meister

Also see these SIB's for some possible help:

SIB 610108
SIB 610707
SIB 611107

Thanks. I would think a dealer with BMW's top rating would have these but I had sent ther first one on already and will do the others. It wakes up every 40 minutes or so for a couple of minutes at 9 amps or so where something like 80 ma is norm. Then it sleeps again until next time. It you are not driving it it is slowy draining and it does not take long. I need to get hold of customer service BMWNA to start.

[X5 Meister]

Happy to help. And yes I agree with your point entirely.

[ChuckG]

For what it is worth, my calculations show that if you start with an 85 amp hour battery that is fully charged a 9 amp drain for 4 minutes every 40 minutes would drain the battery in about 95 hours. If your battery is not fully charged it the time could be much less.

It would be nice to know what caused the periodic 9 amp drain.

Chuck

[michaelhinrichsen]

In the service bulletin it says "Increased closed-circuit currents may occur permanently or intermittently and cause the battery to discharge prematurely. The increase in closed-circuit current may be caused by a faulty control unit"

What control unit would it be referencing or is this a general reference to any control units for particular items?

My X5 has been just fine until six months ago and is driving me crazy. Since it performed just fine for several years, something is powering up intermitently to drain power.

[ard]

Idle speculation:

BMW uses various electrical buses for communication: entertainment and car control (I-Bus, K-bus).. a common thread is that these buses have modules that 'listen' to the bus and when a command comes that is 'theirs' they will wake up and respond.

Increased RF into the bus- perhaps due to degradation of bus damping circuitry- can cause this, or a module could be bad and be responding to spurious signals (ie it becomes too sensitive). Or a module could go bad and generate spurious signals.

I suspect that BMW Techs at dealerships barely have a clue as to how these systems work....

I've been a member of yahoo Hack the I-bus for years.... good info there, but I dont have this problem so I haven't looked.

A

[RedRockin]

This discussion is a bit technically over my head. But, I have to say that this issue is causing me some concern. For day to day use, I do not see a problem. Granted, I do a lot of short trips day to day driving (2 miles here and there) with no real commute. I've had my X5 30i for just over three weeks and make sure that I take it out for a 20 or 30 mile drive at interval of no longer than 2 weeks to make sure I put another charge on the battery (never had to do this with any other vehicle but SA recommends it sooo...). But 95 hours of non-use killing a battery is ridiculous. While I have never had a vehicle that I had to pay attention to the battery charge, especially a brand new vehicle, I am more concerned about a battery draining during non-use. What do people do when they go away and leave the vehicle unused? I live 2 hours from the airport and when I travel, I drive down and leave my car in a secure off-airport lot. When I travel, it is often for a week or two and occasionally three weeks. Do I need to be concerned that I will be coming back to a dead vehicle because I parked it for a week or longer? At these lots, while secure, there is certainly no provisions for trickle chargers. Will someone please educate me in more layman's terms? T.I.A.

Is there no way to put the car in some type of "hibernate" mode to prevent such a drain? This issue really makes no sense to me.

[X-cellent]

Red..

I also travel a great deal and have monitored this board for the two plus years I've owned my X. To date I have not come back (18 days was longest trip) to a dead battery, but did have one after a week of 100 mile commutes (it sat for the weekend), so the drain seems to be cummulative.

In my instance the vehicle reported I had opened the doors too much without running the car...I detailed it saturday and it was dead monday, which is something i do every weekend, so it's very strange it showed up suddenly.

I think almost everyone here feels this is an oddity in todays world, and would guess that most of us have had failures at strange moments. My business partner has less then 10k miles on his 2009 and drives 1 mile per day to work, but has never had an issue (yet), so who knows.....

Carry jumper cables, keep copies of the relevent pages of the owners manual (jump starting, manually putting tranny in nuetral, manually disengaging parking brake) and the "red handle" in the drivers door pocket and if someting happens, you'll be OK.

[RedRockin]

Thanks X. I do carry precautionary equipment, manual, etc. Of course we have Assist and I have AAA too. I am not really "worried". it just does not make much sense to me. After following these forums for the last two months, I am beginning to think the X5 may be the most finicky of vehicles. True, I could have read a lot more before ordering but I have had 20 other vehicles and never gave a moments thought to how often I drive them, how far, "...battery that is fully charged a 9 amp drain for 4 minutes every 40 minutes would drain the battery in about 95 hours. If your battery is not fully charged it the time could be much less." - makes one wonder how to leave the car for a week or two without trickle charging, oil separator issues, hyper-sensitive alignments, and more (all on just the 30i - the 35d has waaaaay many more finickies...). I have a "bookmarks" (favorites) file with links many threads across three forums - the file is labeled "BMW Quality Issues to monitor". Never had to do this for any of my previous 20 vehicles.

Perhaps this has always been the case for "well engineered high performance expensive vehicles" and I never knew because I always had basic american cars. Or, perhaps the X5 is just a really finicky vehicle. I am not complaining, just surprised that almost every week I find another sensitivity (on these forums) I need to be aware of and pay attention to. I guess I could avoid it all and stay off the forums ("ignorance is bliss") but living over 100 miles from a BMW dealership leaves less willing to embrace ignorance. "Dealing" with it as it comes, is really inconvenient so I am better off prepared: "an ounce of prevention...".

Yes, following forums inherently entails reading problems because people tend to post problems and complaints more than compliments. I do really like the X5. And, with so much electronics ("more things to go wrong" as my step father used to say - he bought only roll up windows)... the list just seems to go on and on and on...

[emcman]

In my case the X5 is still at the dealer. Pretty much since Feb 8th less three days I had it before the control message came on again. There is no update as they are talking with NJ which seems confused also. I passed on some posts and SIBs but the head foreman does not have a high opinion of those who post. Just enough information to be dangerious. I wrote to BMWNA but never heard back which in itself is shameful. Next I write to a couple of board members of BMW in Munich. Shame to try that just to get some customer service. The drainage issue is still there but not all the time. I was also told the control message could come on with even a very small difference over what the expected draw was to be which is a few milliamps just to check itself every 40 minues or so. However even that is not norm and in my case over time or the SAV can die. It is a pain when you want to get to work or say at an airport parking lot.