Geoff A

Anyone ever noticed warm air trickling through the top dash vents when everything else is set to cold - including the centre vent mixer valve. It's the same whether a/c is on or off. I get cool or chilled air from the lower and centre vents (depending on whether a/c is on or off), but occasional warm air flow coming out the top of the dash and it pisses me off. Took my E61 535D to local dealer who as good as suggested I didn't understanding how to set air flow properly in the i-Distract system..... and then proceeded to tell me it takes about 20 mins to cool fully. Well, I beg to differ - 25 degrees outside yesterday (that's 77 for those of you still using old money), got a/c blasting and the ally trim was almost ice-cold to touch around centre vent but was supplemented with infrequent wafts of noticeably warm air coming over the top of the dash when I specifically want it to blow cooled air. It will stop if I take airflow away completely - but I like a bit of cool air to come over the dash when chilling. Car was not parked in the sun, so this wasn't residual heat being pushed out of the dash material - it was blowing warm air from the get-go, as soon as the motor got some heat in it. I suspect the flap settings are not right, but wondered if this is a common occurrence. Anyone else had this situation, and more importantly, has it been cured?
Ta for any help offered,

BlueHorse

I might have experienced same problem a few weeks back when I got my car. What I did to correct this is to go to iDrive and there is a vent setting (under car settings I think). In that screen, you will see a diagram of a passenger and bunch of horizontal bars representing air volume. These bars can be either in blue (cold) or red (warm) color. They should be in blue color.

Apparently, if the iDrive is set incorrectly (i.e. you have those bars in red color), you will get warm air even though all the AC dials on dashboard are set to low temprature - this is my guess.