Locked out
 

Hi all,

I have a 2001 X5 and yesterday I went out to unlock my rig and the lock was very hard to turn. I live in Montana and it is very cold. I forced the key a bit and the lock went slack and now rotates 90 degrees right and left but does not open the door or lower the windows. I recently purchased this car and the fob does not work. I also live 200+ miles from a dealer and can't readily get a new key. It also seemed when I turned the key to open it and the lock went slack that it made a weird power noise and the door lock pegs lowered even more than when it's normally locked. (Though I don't know that for sure.) AAA was just here and tried to push the middle console button and pull the door handles twice with no luck. Now the alarm went off and I'm worried about the battery. Is there anything I'm missing or way to get in? Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

The key cylinder has broken, it's a common failure item unfortunately, happened to me back in January 2012, and I had a non-working remote key. You'll have to call a locksmith, I was stuck in the parking lot of my local Ikea...lol! Do a search and you'll see it happens quite frequently, so go buy you a new key, the locksmith cost me more than a new key! The good news is you can buy a repair kit and fix it (I did) yourself. The bad news is your probably going to have a lot of other problems in the near future depending on how well the previous owner took care of the vehicle. Spend some time and do some reading here on the site, these cars can be a nightmare to take care of and drive on a daily basis.

The following should help:
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...-out-help.html

What did the locksmith do romeokc10! I'm gonna call one just want to make sure the have all the info needed so they can open since AAA couldn't.

New guys from AAA showed up and pulled on the driver interior handle and it opened up!!! Now back doors and central locking button don't work...I will do more research on forum. Any help on this problem would be greatly appreciated as well.

Were you locked out or locked in?

Locked out

If you're standing outside facing the drivers door, he placed two little square shaped inflatable in the top right corner of the door. He inflated the bags, each bag has a small squeeze bulb, to push the door frame out just enough so he could reach inside with a long aluminum (bendable) rod and press the central locking button.

Sounds like it may be your GM (General Module), it's a white electronics box located behind glove box, you have to remove the glove box. It looks like a white video cassette tape, again just like the key cylinder it's an oh so common failure item. It controls the dome lights, wiper, central locking and of course the remote lock and unlocking. It's amazing how something with no moving parts inside can fail so often. so now you have an idea of what's in store for you down the road...lol! Welcome to the world of German engineering at it's finest...lol:rofl:! Do a search for GM module and you will find a thread about how to find and remove it, it's really simple. Then you can send it to this guy to have it repaired, he can also repair your key if it's broken also. Yes the remote keys fail quite often also, so you could have bad key also, he repaired mine and then I went to the dealer and bought a new one, now I have two working keys, click on the link below.

BMW General Module 5 (GMV, ZKE V)

I successfully figured it out thanks to the forums. It was an issue due to the double lock. When AAA opened the door from the inside driver's side door the car would start and run but the central locking button, rear door locks and gas cover would not work. I followed the procedures from this post:

BMW E46 Lock Cylinder Instructions

Unscrewed the hex bolt on the locking mechanism removing it and then used a flat blade screw driver to turn the white screw and the car completely unlocked and now everything works fine sans the new locking mechanism that I need to order to replace the one I broke when the lock was frozen.

Glad you solved the problem!