Engine Fail Safe Prog+ABS light+DSC light+sluggish
 

This just happened and my immediate response was to run to this forum.

Was just driving along when warnings happened.

Details:
2003 x5 3 liter
I do not know the age of the battery.
It has been raining quite a bit around here (Tampa...Tropical Storm Isaac)

I looked up the warning message in the book: Paraphrase: Electrical engine fault, see dealership.

Thoughts? It seems to still be driveable but very sluggish acceleration. HELP! Thanks in advance.

Check for air leak. I had all those lights and sluggishness when the rubber boot on the airbox came off.

On the way out the door to see...but still in office clothes...so may need to save the dirty work for later.

Not to mention I have clients coming in for RNC. Non ideal timing!

This happens to me alot as well. I shut it off, remove key, put in key turn 1 click, remove key, wait 30 seconds, start up no lights. I havent had it hooked up to find out what the issue is but it does get annoying.

My buddy had similar complaint. Found his alternator to be the fault. It was spiking to over 60a randomly and tripping all sorts of faults.

+1 on the battery and or alternator! My alternator took a crap and drained my battery low enough to trigger all the alarms.

whoa that is pretty high, considering the 90a/120a alternator installed!

Update.
Since my problem had originally occurred. The faults were intermittent. I was too busy to really deal with it and it really wasn't affecting the driving really.

The issues I wrote about in my first post occurred about two more times but again never for very long and was really more of a nuisance and disappear when I turn the car back on.

Everything was quiet for a week or so but then started getting intermittent DSC (yellow circle) and ABS fault lights on the dash.. No more "engine fail safe mode" issues as I orinally had. These new fault environments would come and go.

I know I needed to get the codes read to see what was going on. In the meantime I put in some seafoam fuel cleaner as a "why not".

Then finally had the codes read by a BMW shop.

5a brief power interruption
(76) 118 DME/DDE does not fulfill torque request
(68) 104 steering angle sensor, internal

The shop was either being lazy with me or they weren't sure exactly what the problem was, saying they needed to research the codes more. However, When I left, they suggested to replace the battery in case the battery was not providing proper amps, triggering all the faults due to the sensitive nature of the system. And the steering sensor.

Upon inspection of the battery myself later ( I don't know how old the battery was ). I deduced by stamped on codes of the duralast gold battery was made in 2005. So going on 5+years. Plausible cause to everything.

Going to see about replacing it. But I could see the alternator being cause as well.

What about monititoring voltage while car is on. You should be between 13-14v. It above spikes, you will have issues. If constantly below, you have issues. Click link in my sig.

this just started happening to me....about a week.......gotta do the research...either alternator or something...