maine545i

I bought a cheap BMW Creator C310 scanner/resetter ($50) after I bought the car last summer. It would read "communication error" when I tried to connect to the active steering control module. When I brought it to the dealership, whom I trust greatly, they said the same thing, they could not connect to the module with their computer and concluded a faulty module. When I bought this car, the front passenger window regulator was broken and the previous owner wedged the window up and shut. He had it like that for year so I suspect that is where the dampness under the carpet came from. My module is under the front passenger carpet, under a piece of foam. I did not have to remove the seat to get it out, like some instructions say to do. Just took the plastic trim piece off along the door, under the glove box and I believe there is a plastic piece beside the center console. Pulled the carpet up (you have to really force the carpet up) and cut the foam piece to gain access to the module. There are a few bolts holding it in place. I just taped the foam back in place when I put it back together.
My steering wheel pinned itself in the 1 o'clock position when the module failed and it did not change until the new module was in and programmed. When I say 1 o'clock I mean that when I drove straight the steering wheel was slightly off center. There definitely was not any change in that regard.
It might be worth taking the twenty minutes to pull your carpet up and see what's going on around the module.

showa

Thank you.
My car is a right hand drive. Which would be US spec passenger side.
Do you think the module would be there similarly?
Can most ecu readers do the equivalent of the one you mentioned?

cmyachtie

YES
And no for the ecu readers

crustboy

Not sure if this helps, but i recently changed my battery and had active steering issues, searched every forum, did every initialising procedure and troubleshoots and still hadn't resolved the issues.

My solution was disconnecting the battery and reconnecting the battery again. Very mundane solution but it fixed my problem.

showa

Hmmm. My battery died a few times over the last 6mths. I hadn't been driving the car
I either had to jump it, or in one case I took it to a battery place where they charged it overnight.
It's not a genuine BMW battery.
I do t know...
Did you get any errors when your car was checked?

These are the errors which are coming up on mine, I finally got a tech who could pull them.

AFS 613C angle sum relation : incorrect

613F Steering Angle plausibility

GW E180 Wake up network unsuccessful

Do any of these mean any thing to anyone? As I said, I've put in a brand new SZL sensor, a new IBS sensor for the battery as those were some of the other readings that showed up before.

Thank you all.
Any help is appreciated.

showa

Help bump. Sorry

FormerE30Owner

Before doing anything else, check/change your battery and verify your charging system. I think that you (and others) are over complicating this, when it could simply be a bad battery causing these problems. At any rate, unless you know for sure that the battery & charging system are ok, you cannot properly troubleshoot this problem. Salut, Bob P.

showa

Thanks. What are the relevant checks for the battery and charging system?
None of those errors show up in a scan, so what do I do?

showa

Any more advice with this? Still no luck.
Being told now that it could be steering rack. Idk what to think.
Replacement of that is almost the value of the car at this point....

cmyachtie

Considering your history from what you posted I would find a good BMW dealer with a good software guy and have the software (whole car ) reloaded. Should only cost $250 max. And see what happens think it's worth a shot before replacing the rack.
Due to low voltage by battery failing things can get real squirrelly with these cars, when I got mine it was 8 yrs old and only had 63000kms that's les than 40Kmiles and had battery go south many times due to sitting instead of being driven I had all kinds of weird things happen the first yer I drove it and spend more time with it hooked up,to,my laptop running INPA, DIS and more to,try to get it fixed and finally after talking to several of my local experts here got a new me of a good BMW computer guy working at my local dealer and told him that I wanted the software reloaded, after over an hour the tech came and told me the cluster was shot and needed for re placement Imtold him. Noway as I had already tried that so he went back and tried again and they got everything working right it can be tricky....