Car shifts to Neutral at speed

[KmanOz]

@ JamesBoags

I have exactly the same issue on my 07 3.0d. In fact its gone back to my dealer twice for this issue and is with them right now. Let me explain what happens.

For whatever reason and quite randomly there is a sudden loss of power. This can, and has happened at 110 km travelling along a freeway or 10 km pulling up to or away from a set of lights or even just sitting there in Drive and waiting at a set of lights. The sequence of events goes like this. Car puts itself in neutral, and often although not always the motor stalls. This is accompanied by the main screen displaying either nothing or "DSC System Fail" or "Fault in Drive". Sometimes I can start the engine straight away (even while still rolling) and sometimes it just cranks and cranks and nothing. When that happens I have to stop and completely turn the car off and wait This has happened at intersections and I can tell you drivers behind me get really pissed off.

As you can imagine this is quite disconcerting and downright dangerous. As I mentioned above it happened to me once doing 110 km along a freeway. Drive in neutral, motor stalled, power steering no longer and unassisted brakes. Fu**ing scary stuff !!

My dealer has been good about this and so far have swapped my Alternator but it keeps happening. I haven't written directly to BMW but if you could give me the details of the person you wrote to I may write to them as well depending on what happens when I get it back from this round of repairs. This time they are keeping it for a week because when I first told them about this problem, I can honestly say they didn't quite believe me. They are giving the car to the head of service so he can drive it around all week. By sheer luck it started doing it last week and I managed to record all of it on my iPhone. I now have a 4 minute video of the car doing all of the above which I gave to my guy at BMW as well. He tells me he has sent the video to BMW but I think after reading your post I up the ante on this whole affair.

Anyway I guess we should keep in touch with where all this goes. Im in Melbourne and the car is at Melbourne BMW where is was purchased.

To be honest Im scared of the car now.

UPDATE : Here is the link to the video for anyone interested ..

http://files.me.com/pkyrkos/7chwns

Kman