Intermittant Navi Display, any thoughts?
 

Strange experience with the Navi. At startup, it luminates then goes dark. All radio functions are okay but no display. I drive for about 3 minutes and the display comes back on and is fine. It has happened twice in the last 2 days after a morning startup and it happened once about 3 months ago. I bought the X in November and the original owner had the battery changed about a year ago so I'm pretty sure it's not a battery issue. Any thoughts?

Classic. Your nav computer is dying unfortunately. Pull fuse #75 for it in the trunk and you should get it to work again, however after you turn off the car and let it sit for 10 minutes or so, you'll have the problem again on restart. If you are under warranty, run and I mean RUN don't walk to the dealer to get it replaced under warranty IMMEDIATELY.

Thanks. I've read the threads but none of them seemed to describe my particular symptom. This has happened only twice in two days but has always come back on after 3-5 minutes. Maybe I'll just wait and see what happens. Hopefully it's a glitch...hopefully.

You can always be hopeful, but it's most likely on it's way out. Do you have a warranty?

Unfortunately not. Dang, the X only has 55k miles! It's a gripe, but who makes a navi that starts to go out w/ only 50k miles? I know, the Germans (not being racist or anything)!

Any CPO or extended warranty? You're lucky, some crap out after just 2 years.

only the factory warranty, and the Platnum extended warranty offered by BMW cover the navigation computer. CPO never covers the NAV

Yea. I sold and installed stereos and alarms for 20 years but really didn't have to work on BMW's w/ nav units. I don't think I want to tackle the task of gutting the entire system and starting from scratch. I really don't mind the OEM system...if it worked properly. I'm not that picky anymore. Getting old I suppose. So you think the nav computer is going out? What is the replacement cost and where is the computer located? Thanks.