Car shifts to Neutral at speed
 

Hi All , I reported some tranmission issues a while ago took it to the dealer and was given the "can't replicate the problem". Car is a 2007 3.0 Diesel.

Yesterday the car had another issue at the same place & same driving conditions some 200 km out of Sydney (so I can't take my service guy there to see it for himself !!).

I was driving at approximately 70 km/h on the entrance to the freeway which is on a slight downward slope, foot was off accelerator (vehicle coasting in Drive to maintain speed limit) , not sure what gear the car was in but I'd presume 5th , this was just prior to merging and attempting to accelerate to 110 km/h.
On acceleration, the vehicle of it’s own accord shifted to Neutral, engine did not stall, first evidence of neutral was that when I attempted to accelerate the engine freely revved up to 5000 rpm (I was watching the mirror at this time preparing to merge to the traffic moving at 110 km/h), No warning lights or chimes.. At this stage several cars travelling at 110 km/h including a large truck had to slow to avoid my vehicle which was unable to maintain a speed above 70 kmh. An extremely dangerous situation, I had my wife and 16 month old in the vehicle !
Car was placed in Drive again from Neutral with car rolling at approx 70 km/h and a second attempt at trying to get to highway speed caused the vehicle to go to Neutral again, it was observed at this time that vehicle Tacho went from 4000 rpm to 0 then back to idle speed...previously had a problem with the car changing with a "Thud" and searching for gears at the exact same place !!! It does not occur in normal driving conditions arund town (max 80 kmh on expressway)..... ... It would appear the engine is cutting out and the car is going to Neutral... It's extremely dangerous when this occurs... I am writing a letter to BMW to detail the situation and my request for a proactive diagnostic approach at my next service appointment...rather than everything looks ok , no check control messages stored & the usual warranty blurb.... Any ideas or comments welcomed.. maybe a software update woudl fix (or at least should be one of the first things they do? ) ?

scary situation... hope it works out for you.

Is your shifter actually MOVING to neutral?

You state you had to shift it to Drive? How did it get to neutral?

Is this "shifted to neutral" just mean "it wasn't driving the car" or 'the engine was not powering the wheels"??

The 'couldn't replicate' is BS. Ask them to pull all engine and transmission troube codes, including all historical codes.. AND GIVE YOU EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT. Insist on a complete diagnostic of the shifting and transmission system.

I think this is actually a new safety feature update since the Toyota fiasco ;)

In all seriousness, I would approach the dealer and very sternly tell them action needs to be taken and you can't simply wait for another life threatening situation before bringing it back in.

Many things can be overlooked, but safety is not one of them. No excuses for this sort of thing.

@ 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 !! :wow:

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

Let me explain my situation which is similar to JamesBoags.

Stick goes into neutral BY ITSELF. I have video to prove it !!

That means it doesn't drive the car AT ALL.

This is a hard fault to replicate. It is SO RANDOM its ridiculous. The more I think about what I have been putting up with the more I am starting to worry !! They have checked all the logs in the cars computer and they can't find anything strange.

Cheers Kman

AFAIK all E70s, regardless of location, have a push button start/stop and the joystick style shifter. IOW the Start/Stop and Shifter mechanisms are entirely electrical - just fancy "normally off or on" push buttons. All it takes to screw up this system is an unintended short/open ANYWHERE in the circuit(s). So the problem could be in the manual controllers, the wiring or the 'computers/software' that actually control nearly every aspect of a E70.

FWIW what you guys are describing sounds a lot like what an E70 does when someone simply presses the start/stop button or bumps the shifter at speed as described in this thread about emergency shut off. I am not suggesting that these reports are caused by an operator error. Just that the result would be the same. And a dealer may or may not find that a handy excuse for not doing a through search for an intermittent electrical problem.

Funf Dreisig

Edit: IIRC from driving in Oz and the UK, many of the driver controls are not mirrored: e.g.. the foot pedals, shift patterns for manual trannys, etc. But I would think the E70 shifter would be mirrored because of the location of the thumb button. IOW right hand drive E70s may have different shifters and all most certainly have different wiring harnesses than the E70s in the US, Europe, etc. So...

It would be very interesting to know whether any left hand drive E70's have had this problem.

@Funf

Its too bad my video is 137Mb otherwise I would attach it here. Its nothing like pressing the Start/Stop button or shifter or anything in that Emergency thread but thanks for your input nevertheless.

Kman

Hi thanks for the replies

I watched the shifter shift to Neutral itself (the second time) with that mechanical type noise it makes when it places the car into neutral.. I was nowhere near the shifter... I have also had the car stall at idle twice in traffic for no reason and the car shifts to neutral , I press the start / stop button and it fires up right away...

I am writing a letter to the Customer Service Manager in Melbourne.. I told them last time at the dealer after they said no fault found that if it occurs in such a situation of dire emergency I wouldn't like to be BMW when I report what occurred.

regards

Just to be clear...

I am NOT suggesting that either of you are pressing the start/stop button or bumping the shifter into neutral while driving, as ABMW reported in the emergency stop thread.

I AM suggesting that the actions your X5 takes (on its own) are similar to what would happen IF you did press the start/stop button or bump the shifter into neutral while driving. IOW your X5 is doing one or both of these things all by itself. And one possible cause is an electrical fault due to faulty shifter controller, start/stop button, wiring harness or computer(s)/software glitch.

Funf Dreisig