brosken

BMW E60 525D MY2004/11 NC61 (spec sheet below)

Hi guys,

Been a while since I've visited due to moving and house renovations which also led to neglecting my car for a long time.
Usual stuff happened because of long intervals between driving it, battery drained, green algae buildup on the seals where the windows slide through, etc...

No biggy until I noticed that approximately 2 weeks my rear left window was left open 1/4th of the way (parked on the driveway) :-o The horror!
Mould was growing on the rear seat and other places due to rain falling in, dew and god knows what else coming through the window.

So first thing I try is to start the car, no luck there (battery nearly dead). Second thing is to close the window, in doing so the window fully closes and drops back down 1/4th of the way. Somehow the protection system for that window activates... Ok so next best thing is raise the window so it's still got 1 or 2 mm left before hitting the fully closed position (and reopening) but it's closed now.

Slowly becomes clear this is gonna take some serious elbow grease to get my baby back into shape. So hooked up the CTEK 7 charger on the terminals under the hood and let it charge for a night but no luck it keeps charging but nothing is coming in as I try to start the car. Ok let's try again but with reconditioning mode for another day, again no luck and assume battery is a goner so order a new one online. While waiting for the new battery to arrive I decide to remove the dead one and see the battery compartment has about 2 cm of water in it (ffs Murphy is in the house :@ ). So removed as much water as I could and after a few days decided to puncture a few holes in the rubber grommets that are in the battery tray to drain the remaining water in the tray.
Took the battery inside and thought "what the hell, might as well try to recondition it without all the BMW electronics that might interfere the charging/reconditioning process" and I'll be damned but the next day it actually held a decent charge! Let it recondition for another 48h and after testing it with a batttery load tester it was back in shape. So cancelled the battery order (which was taking over a week to deliver instead of 24h) and reinstalled the old battery.

Meanwhile stripping trunk lining, carpets, rear seats, parcel shelf, seatbelts and cleaning/disinfecting anything we could with a lot of help from my wife <3
Started the car, engine sounds fine after a few revs. :-) Parked it closer to the door so I can work on it easier, closed it with the remote but my reversing light stays lit *wtf*. Prolly a minor electric gremlin I thought and continued cleaning the interior parts we removed. Next day I start the car to take the wife's Mini to the local stealer for a tire change (it's a company lease car) and drive back.
No further issues until the day after when we go to pick up the Mini... Driving to the stealer was without issue but when starting the car to drive back suddenly I had no exterior lights, NONE! No brakelight, headlight, taillight, indicator lights, even the hazards wouldn't work. Instrument cluster dark and CIC display was also dark. Crap the electrical gremlin turned into a monster *sigh*. Got home safely and started unplugging all lights in case a short in one of the head/taillights was the cause or bad ground, no luck. So decided to pull the LCM and holy crap, there were actual traces of electronics corrosion that leaked out of the box and left a trace! Unplugged it and even the plug had the green signs of corrosion. Thinking if it goes on like this it might turn out to be a total loss so I took a beer and sat down to reflect on what other costs might be coming if it goes on like this. Now I'm no electronics engineer but luckely my dad was and well I learned a couple of things from seeing him working on electronics so decided to take out my electronics tools that were collecting dust, thinking I can't make it any worse than it is. So opened the LCM and it looked like a tanning booth for the Hulk, green corrosion all over the place! Sprayed it with a ton of contact cleaner, corrosion remover and brushed it all off, wiped it dry and inspected the board for any visible damage or shorts. Ok to my surprise it looked fine. Sprayed the connector in the car, brushed it clean, added some compressed air and waited for a few hours.
Plugged LCM back in, inserted key in ignition, said a little prayer and turned the key... no joy :-( Waited for 15mins and tried again, hallelujah! LCM works again. After 24h and several starts it still is good so seems to be fixed.

So the car is just moaning about one thing and that's the ABS/belt buckle light. Thought maybe the connectors might be affected as well so I dove under the drivers seat and saw a cable was laying there unconnected. Thinking it was the tensioner cable from the seatbelt socket that was loose I traced the cable from the seatbelt socket to the yellow plug and that one was plugged in so traced where that unconnected cable came from and it seems I have a seatbelt tensioner anchor to the left of my seat as well but one isn't hooked up.

Anyone know where that second tensioner plug should go?

Thanks,

Below is a pic of how it looks like.







Original car specs:

twh

Be careful. Some (all?) of these cars have pyro devices on the seat belts that fire during a collision.

brosken

Yeah, those things can have a nasty bang but I disconnect the battery at least an hour before touching anything airbag related ;-)

Finally finished cleaning the interior.
Ran ISTA and cleared all errors to see which ones come back.
CiC was retrofitted so CCC isn't present anymore. I assume my preheating control unit is kaput?
What do you guys think about the belt tensioner codes, is it the tensioners or the sensor in the B pillar? Any idea what the resistance should be if I measure it on the tensioners themselves with a DMM?

These are still present:

after clearing codes

with symptoms