big_ipaq

I doubt it, even assuming you're talking about E60.

Veight

Yeah when my clock was zeroed out, I also had the car on a ramp symbol.

I think my battery problem is fixed now after I took my car in last week and received some ither information regarding charging the battery.

The tested my battery and parasitic draw from my accessories all checked out ok. The charged my battery and I havent had the problem in a week now.

I told BMW that I had tried to "trickle charge" my battery on 3 separate occasions at 2 amps with my home car battery charger. On 2 of those 3 times i had it on trickle charge for 2 days straight. Its a huge charger on wheels with a cooling fan and I know how to use it. But it didn't seem to charge the car. Thats when the service advisor asked a mechanic in the back and relayed to me that the 550 computer will not allow a trickle charge from a regular car charger unless is above 2 amps. So all the time i spent carefully slow charging my battery was a waste of time. There should be a red sticker under the hood explaning this fact. Nowhere in the cars manual does it tell you this.

I now also bought one of those small BMW "intelligent chargers" that only puts out 1.25 ah and that somehow does charge the battery.

Nevermind

I think that you are missing something here guys. I don't want to trickle charge my ride. I don't want the date to reset on its own. I don't want spurious service required symbols coming up on the dash. My last car didn't have a problem, the one before that neither, or the one before that. If the E60 requires a lot of electrical energy to run it then I suggest they fit it with an adequate electrical system. We haven't even hit the cold weather yet and my car is garaged. If the problem reappears then my local dealer will need to convince me of the car's ability to rest for two weeks in an airport carpark over Christmas and start again with no problems or I'll have to take our four year old AUDI estate and suffer the "I told you not to buy a BMW" abuse from nearly everybody I know. My local BMW dealer's service is exemplary with regard to Warranty issues. I don't know what the AUDI dealer is like as I've only been driving them for six years.

dlevi67

BMW have sold several tens of thousands of E60s, and we are getting all of 4 people on this board with a potentially similar issue. VEight's issue seems to be that the battery was not charged properly in the first place - not good, but it can happen (see his other thread). While your (and Dawi's) gremlin may be annoying, before declaring the car a total write off and "something not to buy" wait a second and get it diagnosed properly.

The majority of the thread is about a discovery that a) a trickle charger won't actually charge the battery and b) BMW's intelligent charger quality control is not all that's cracked up to be

FWIW, it wasn't over Christmas, but my E60 (E61) was in an airport car park for 10 days a couple of weeks ago and it started perfectly OK on our return. It is regularly on the street (I have no garage) for a few days at a time, and I've never had a battery problem. I have - and use, especially in the last two weeks - electric seats, and many times the only driving I do in a day is 6 miles to the train station in the morning, and 6 back in the evening, with lights on, and the climate control (i.e. fan and demister, as far as electrics are concerned) working quite hard at keeping windows clear and my hands warm.

Veight

I think its normal to have to charge the battery when you drive it as little as I do. If I drove it often, yes Id be complaining.

Nevermind

Those are both fair comments, guys. I'm just not used to having issues with new cars. So far mine has had two recalls and had a new turbo which I am not entirely sure has cured the lag problem that I was having, I may just be driving round it. They are all extremely minor incidents in themselves, but start creating nagging doubts as to the reliability of the vehicle.