I had parked my car in the garage with the front wheels turned to the right. My battery went low enough overnight to not allow the motor to turn over the next day. Then used a trickle charger overnight to slowly recharge the battery. Upon driving I got the active steering malfunction warning which is normal any time the battery is disconnected. I drove in a few circles in each direction to teach the car the full left and right position as normal but this time the car did not reset itself back to normal. Now after a few different tries to re learn the positions it still is off, and now in order to drive in a strait line my steering wheel has to be about 90 degrees to the right in order to keep the wheels strait. How the hell did my steering wheel get turned 90 degrees to the right without the wheels going along with it? The steering wheel must not be directly connected to the gears in the steering rack which seems a bit dangerous to me. I think it is about time for me to upgrade to the black AGM battery and also get in the habit of using a trickle charger every night on my daily driver! BMW's efficient dynamics as they call it just means your car saves gas by not charging your battery while you drive. This causes electrical problems and is starting to get old.

One of the best threads I've ever read on here :thumbsup: - hope this cheers you up at least a little bit, cuz unfortunately I have no constructive input to offer on your issue, aside from the obvious "if your car's under warranty..." but I'm guessing this thread wouldn't exit if it was. GL fixing this and let us know how you resolve this pls

Hi

To re-set the steeringwheel angle , you must ( with standing car , not driving ) start the car , then turn the steeringwheel all way to the left , then to the right , and then back to normal ( straight position ) , turn of the car and wait for about 30 sec. then start the car ,and now it should be in order , thats the way BMW TIS say it should be done , good luck :)

+1 I agree. Also try to straighten the steering wheel and then turn it off and on. See if that works out for you. Good luck!

+1

And I always make a mistake for being too quick. Many times, I start the car and turn the wheel IMMEDIATELY all the way to the left or right. It will cause an active steering malfunction and wheel is at 90.

Have the car stand still and do the above.

I am well aware of this TIS procedure. ( usually the TIS procedure works fine, just not this time ) Tried many times, even did figure eights in the parking lot, no luck. I thought about it and I think it had something to do with the way your battery would drop voltage while trying to crank, kind of like a voltage fluctuation from 6-12 volts real fast. Actually the car still has CPO warranty and will likely only cost me the $50 dollar deductible. I am just scared about next year when the warranty is up, that active steering rack parts and labor is $4,500.

Duplicate the gripe. Park car with wheels and steering wheel straight. Discharge the battery, I don't know, maybe leave something on, parking lights...
Recharge battery next day. Let's see what happens. Good luck.

discharging the battery is the easy part. I will just drive around and then park it like normal. ( Just kidding ) Actually once this issue is resolved I am going to get the new AGU battery and also install a Battery Tender charging cable to take really good care of my new battery. The thing about the TIS procedure is that it just is intended to show the car where the limits of left and right are, but somehow I need to re-clock the steering wheel. Anyway like I said I am going to take it in to the dealer and pray it is covered under warranty.

Just curious, how many miles on your 5?

I had the wheel turned when the battery died so that might have been the issue. I used my friends autologic tool and tried to reset the active steering and it failed the initialization procedure twice, like it was getting stuck or something. So I reset the codes and drove away, but this time my wheel was heavy so I did the normal manual reset procedure of going all the way left and right and then it was fine. Car is fixed now. I know using the autologic made the difference.