rear doors and tailgate wont unlock
 

Having a odd door lock issue with my 05. I have it programmed to unlock all doors with one key press. But randomly it only unlocks just the front doors and the rear hatch. Rear doors and rear tailgate stay locked. Rear doors will not manually unlock from the inside either. Unlock with key in door no difference along with the unlock button behind the shifter. Its not every time but its pretty frequent and extremely annoying. I did not have the X5 for very long before I had the locks programmed this way so I cant be sure the programming caused this. It also happens when locking that sometimes the rear doors wont lock with the fronts and if you open them the alarm goes off. Any thoughts on where I should look? Also shouldnt the interior door handles unlock the doors no matter what? Seems unsafe that there no mechanical override in the event of a accident. everything else on the rear doors and trunk work. wiper, washer, windows, soft close, lights etc. just the unlock has completely failed on the rear doors and tailgate

The one door unlock is key dependent did you have all keys programmed for this method? I program my keys to open all doors and wife's to do the one/all. I'm assuming you're using the same key and it does the unlock wrong some times.

I had a similar bug with my e53 where it would behave like I used a different key to unlock and it would auto adjust the seat to some other position and it would happen fairly regularly like monthly and somehow I guessed into this fix you can try;

When it doesn't do what you expect doing this kicked it back into proper function:

Get in the car put in the key to roll Sieb the window, in my case I had to press the memory one button to reset the seat and steering and then reach out the window and with the key lock and unlock the door. That would reset the system and it would not move the seat on unlock for a month or three until the next time. Until I figured out this hack it would reset my seat/steering/mirrors every unlock until I did the hack.

Good luck hope it works.

I think I would use PA Soft (aka BMW Scanner 1.4) to reset the door locks back to the factory 2-press unlock system....Then re-select one press unlock for each key per instructions below...

https://xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/...all-doors.html

If that fails to work, I would try a new used LCM module...which are cheap used , but need to be coded to the car I believe.

i currently only have 1 key. it has now gotten to the point where for the past 2 days the rear doors and tailgate havent unlocked once (atleast 30 attempts throughout the day) seat, mirrors and steering wheel havent changed positions

What exactly did you program and how? I would probably consider undoing that and start over. Was a battery maintainer used? If you flashed a module on a lower voltage you might get some interesting results

.There's a child lock switch on the inside but I think that just prevents the inner door handle from working, not sure if it messes with the lock mechanism at all.

I've encountered some strange behavior with the lock mechanism on mine a couple times but haven't picked that battle yet. Just keeping it unlocked for now. I have to code out the beeping first, if anyone knows how to do that. I also have a parasitic draw .. and the left rear exterior door handle failed yesterday but I smacked it back into place enough for now. These are easy fixes right.

i had a local BMW shop do it for me. they did one press all unlock/lock. turned off auto lock when driving and turned on windows up when holding lock feature. everything else has been perfect. it took about a week for the failing door lock to occur/be noticed but it work more times then it failed. been about a month now and it is actually never unlocking the rear doors

When my central lock got confused the confused state stayed until I did the lock/unlock through the door trick. It didn't help to unlock/lock/unlock while outside. I didn't have my car programmed for all unlock I only noticed it was using the wrong key program for the mirrors and seat.

I had to put the key in to roll down the window but I didn't start the car then I pulled the key out and reached though the window and lock/unlock with the key blade. It worked every time it happened and then I got a month or few of reprieve until it happened again.

Get a factory key there are links to the online legit BMW dealer that will save you like $50. That's where I got mine when I lost my spare key and my remaining key lost remote function. It was worth every penny.

Coding for selective locking alters if only the driver door or all are opened with first unlock. So coding wouldn't explain the difference with both front doors opposed to rears. Front door locking is operated by individual door modules (P-bus message from body module) and rear doors by body module directly. So this sounds like a body module problem.

rear doors and tailgate wont unlock
 

Solid deduction. This is where you take your bidirectional scanner and command doors to lock/unlock directly and figure out what works and doesn't.

Are you coincidentally just having lots of DLA failure

A clue is you said you opened a door and set of the alarm.

Are all the doors actually locking and unlocking on command? It feels more like some of the locks are taking more than one press to unlock.

so as of right now the rear doors and tailgate only havent unlocked in a few days. but when it was a speradic issue you would unlock all doors with one press and it would be pretty much all at the same time as far as i can tell, then whatever issue is happening when i went to lock with 1 press it must not have locked the rear doors (lock plunger in the up position) and my wife not knowing went to grab something from the back seat and set the alarm off. so the vehicle thinks the doors were locked but they were unlocked. which makes me think to check to get in the X5, press the interior lock button so it thinks all doors are locked then try to unlock the rear doors with the interior handles. assuming in its brain when i press unlock that it has unlocked the doors hence the interior handles not triggering the unlock mechanism.

Do some direct testing. You exactly described my suspicion of dying DLA. I had to refurbish about 4-5 of them between our two e53.

$12 vs. $230@

unlocked it after work with the key fob button and only front doors unlocked. sat in it and locked/unlocked with the central button behind the shifter and after 3 attempts the rear doors unlocked and lock 5 times in a row. drove to the grocery store and it wouldnt lock the rear doors after multiple attempts. i did manually lock them when i got home just to be safe overnight. then this morning went to unlock with the key and all doors unlocked. got to work and hit the lock button on the key and they all locked.

rear doors and tailgate wont unlock
 

Symptom of wearing door lock actuator.

How many miles when you had the auto lock from speed disabled?

Wife's had that on and 3/4 of her DLA failed about 160,000 mi.

Mine did not hand it on and only one failed in 205,000 mi.

They fail when the brushes on the cheap motors fail. They will go though an intermittent phase where they work when they want to.

In our case they would usually take a couple tries to unlock but would unlock by the third try. That lasted a few months and then would either lock or unlock but not the other.

The risk of continuing with a misbehaving DLA is if the secondary lock fails locked you can't open the door at all.

I can attest to this as I just went through it last week. My DLA had been inconsistent for a couple of months. I bought a new unit and was planning on installing when the weather gets cooler here in TX later in the fall. Instead, the actuator failed altogether leaving the door unable to be unlocked from either inside or outside latch. Made the job exponentially harder!

Best regards,
Chris
Lockhart, Texas

When this happens you can usually get the secondary lock to unlock with enough tries, by using the keyfob to lock/unlock (just one press unlock then try inside door handle) if it doesn't work no point in Seville unlock attempt, relock the doors and try again. You can try the emergency egress also where you lock with the keyfob twice white inside the car then while holding the central lock button down to disable the secondary lock pull the inside handle to unlock. If the button pops up, use fob to unlock before open the door to disable the alarm.

If the secondary motor odd completely failed you have a rough day ahead of you. You can find the pinout and use a couple 9v batteries in series to apply extra voltage to the secondary motor both directions to try to get it off the dead spot and unlock one more time.

would the DLA wearing out effect both rear doors and tailgate at the same time or they on the same circuit? auto lock was disabled 2,000ish miles ago when the truck was at 162K. ive only owned it for about 2,500 miles. is the DLA the same part that would be in my 01? its got 250k on it but never had a lock issue and never had auto locks (atleast not in 120k miles of my ownership)

this is my last working day this week so tomorrow and friday i will be diving deeper into it. just want to avoid firing the parts cannon at it if its something simple

When wife's went bad they failed in very quick succession. Very close to the miles you are. You may have just not noticed one or two doors you weren't using weren't reliably unlocking and when you did a couple already have failed.

The test is pretty simple; if the bolt doesn't pop up first press the motor is shot. Same for locking; the assembly is not going to temporarily stick or jam. The first time it doesn't lock or unlock on the first press the brushes are worn out.

If you are reasonably handy with you hands you can refurbish for $12@.

I have a detailed step by step process outlines search for title: AWR-fix and look for DLA.

If there was a way to verify the age you might can find used on eBay.

eBay genuine used ≈50$

had 4 days off of work and the door locks didnt fail once so i was not able to diagnose, first day of work and the rear locks fail because of course they would lol

Bwahhaahhaa. Did they fail open or fail closed?


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both. sometimes it will unlock all then when you go to lock it wont lock the back doors but it will think its locked and set the alarm off if you open the "unlocked" door. or it will fail locked and never unlock the rear doors or the lower hatch.

Lower hatch? No lock on lower hatch. Not familiar with tailgate DLA failing being common. I've rebuilt one from a 2004 though where soft close failed. I rebuilt it to be regular close as the part was over $400!

slight odd update. have a appointment with the bmw shop to disable the one press unlock and go back to factory to make sure thats not the issue. wont be for another week though. however last night my wife and i were sitting on the tailgate (i have been manually releasing the lower gate latch) and out of no where the rear hatch lights kicked on. after that happened the lower gate was working with the button along with the rear doors locking/unlocking. so now it seems i may possibly have a pinch wire somewhere in the lower gate or something along the lines of that, that when we were both sitting on it it may have moved the harness enough to reenable. which would explain the randomness of the problem could be breaking and fixing itself over bumps. something i will have to deep dive later this week

There's a wire loom goes through. I forget what's all powered on the lower tailgate but if the button shorts the brain will deactivated it. I had that happen with the upper tailgate.

BMW eliminated the electric latch on the bottom tailgate in the next model I totally forgot it has a button.

Top right is the rubber corrugated tube for the hatch, look for similar on the bottom. When I cut mine open there were a couple damaged wires. Good chance you have similar going on.

I was able to get my remote button to work if slammed the tailgate as an example.

update for anyone who cares or has a similar issue, still no luck. i have however found a decent work around as a temp/perm fix. with the doors electronically unlocked i unplugged the electric locks to the rear doors and will manually unlock/lock when needed. inconvenient if you have rear passengers but i rarely do so it will work out for me. rear lower hatch will also be unlocked manually. the randomness of when they would work is what is making this difficult to isolate. sometimes it just works no problem, sometimes it only works after manually opening the lower tail gate, sometimes it works after playing wit the rear outside door handle, sometimes it works after mashing the unlock/lock button inside 5 times.

If those locks are controlled by relays in the general module that would be a good suspect.