balbs

According to this, IBS is on #1

http://bmwfans.info/parts/catalog/E6...battery_cable/

phlfly

yes, because how did the system know that battery was replaced two(2) miles before? it's really smart car, I guess.

or_550i

Oh damn. Yes. part 61129215949. Thanks for the correction. At first glace it looked like the positive connector (which is #2). Correct. I'll go find my hole and get back in it.

Secretaznsauce

Fyi.. My car just did the same... Check the resistance at the bst and it was 2.8 ohms.. I unplugged battery for 5 mins and reset the light with inpb and no more issues.. And yes i am running after market batteriy in my e60 525 e90 325i and z4 coupe for 2 years now with no issues than this one

bubba43

Seem i have the same problem with diagnosed high resistance BST. I started taking apart the trunk to see where this cable goes. It disappears behind the rear seat with no connector, so it seems this a fairly long cable. I have the E60 Bentley manual but it does not indicate how to remove this cable from the car. I installed a new battery about 12 months ago and I suppose I could have disturbed something. Anyone have steps on how to remove and replace this cable? i find it hard to believe that it would go bad since this is safety component. I also do not believe that having the fault will disable the air bags.
I will double check all connections and then take it into an independent to have them try clearing the codes.

louisrai

Yes, this cable goes all the way from the battery to the front positive end next to engine. The labor can be 5 hours. The system message shows that there is a fault on the cable, but I really doubt that the cable went bad. The code can not be cleared for sure....

balbs

Sorry, but it does not. Only from the battery to around the center of the trunk behind the back seat. I have taken mine out before. You just remove the side panels on the passenger side. There's a torx screw on the trunk floor under the black plastic cover where the cargo net would latch on to to remove the rear side panel. 5 hour job is a rip off. I did mine in about 20 min.

Incidentally, that main junction point (battery cable to main bus cable to engine) is the focus of the recent battery connection recall.

bubba43

Wow, it just so happens that the dealer Brecht BMW in Escondido was doing the batter recall when they gave me this quote. You mean that could have done the cable swap at the same time without any additional labor? They wanted $543 to do the job. Wow again.

OK, so I pulled back the side panel after removing the cargo net tie down and the cable disappears from there. What other part do I remove to see the termination point? It makes sense that this does not go all the way to the engine as that would be bad whenever service would be required after a crash. Not very good engineering and BMW is better than that. A little more detail please.

balbs

This should help you out. Basically take out all of the luggage floor fabric material to expose the cable.

http://tis.spaghetticoder.org/s/view.pl?1/08/99/92

BTW, before completely removing it, just disconnect it from the battery and the luggage compartment bolt and measure the cable's resistance with a multimeter. It should be around 2.5 Ohms (Sorry, I forgot the actual value...please verify). If it is, clean all contacts that might raise its resistance like the battery posts and positive terminal. That way, you won't have to fully swap out the cable.

Also, since you did the battey recall, the end on the luggage compartment might be clean already.

sanjsanj

The current recall out for our cars might be related to this- vibrations from the car makes something loose and increases the resistance the battery positive cable, which has resulted in a few fires.


Edit: just read the thread properly and it seems like you already know...