Hi ALl,
My 2005 E61 550i has thrown a huge fit. Driving it on monday the speedo and rev counter starting cutting out (flicked down to zero and than back on... repeated a lot), then the idrive screen started flicking on and off. Followed by lots of error messages ending in 'Central electronics total failure: do not drive'. The car still drove fine, but not much worked (including indicators, idrve etc etc), though the wipers did come on!!

THe car is in at an indy dealer now who have found 97 errors reported by the OBD.

Any thoughts on the possible cause/fix?

I think water might have been leaking into the boot area from the sunroof drains. A quick google seems to suggest this is possible, and that there are a load of computers/electronics modules located under the boot floor that would be affected by water ingress, and cause failures like this.

All thoughts/expereinces appreciated as I think I could be looking at a big bill to fix. My worse nightmare is a damaged car wiring loom, but no work has been done on the car so water ingress after all the heavy rain over the weekend seems more likely.

thanks,
Neil

Note: posted in E61 sub-forum to, but I know E60 forum gets more traffic....

 

Did you look if there is water in the trunk????

 

there was some sign of water in battery area. I didn't have time to look right into the wheel well to see if any sloppy around in there.

Anyone know what items are hidden away under the boot/trunk floor that might have been affected?

Or what single points of failure could suddenly cause total electronics failure?

 

can't help much but the I read at Bimmerfest that one member had liquid spilled in the trunk and the wheel weld area, damaged the control module there. The cost for replacement was around $ 1500. You can search for that thread there.