Update - just spoke with Mike at Yarbrough - he does not do iDrives so I'm "stuck" with Carl Bergman - but they've done alright by me - it's just that it won't be until a week from Thursday and I need the car that weekend.

 

Don't worry, they can remove the iDrive and you can still drive the car. I did for 2 weeks without the CCC in the car. It's just annoying that you don't have radio, climate, and NAV functions in the meantime.

 

The thing with the "limp home" was I was driving normally and I started to lose power and the car acted as if choking and every time I had to slow down, I could not speed back up - started at 40, then 30, then 20. By the time I hit the last light, 8 miles from my house, I was doing 10 MPH on first gear and I rode like that all the way home. Hard to convey the sound I was hearing on a written piece but it sounded like chuf-chuf-chuf-chuf, and applying more gas would make the car shake violently until I shifted to a lower gear. Made it to my driveway and the car quit. I let it sit as I chatted with my wife and a neighbor and when I started it again, it was 100% OK.

The dealer said the following (verbatim): "44314 found misfire faults for cyl 1,2,4,5,7,8 and multiple cyl misfire all 1 time car was hot 59l of fuel at 800rpms - cleared fault and was unable to duplicate"

I drove to the dealer that morning without a problem so of course they were unable to duplicate.

 

PS Don't know if this happens to all of you but before you hit "Post Reply" save what you wrote to the buffer (select text, control+c), because if you take "too long" the site will boot you off - you hit reply and it will come back with "you must be logged on..." If you wrote a long piece you'll lose it. I do that for e-mail as well. I hate when I'm on a roll, telling a story and lose it because the stupid mail engine crapped out on me. If you copy to the buffer before you hit post/send, you can always paste when you get back in - that's it - PSA. :-)

 

Whoa, that is way more than the iDrive malfunction. Misfires can be caused by a lot of things. It may be the coils (but doubtful so many would fail at once), could be the MAF sensor (too much/too little air getting in), could be the O2 sensors (weird in a 2006 550 unless it has a TON of miles), could be the Fuel Filter, could be the Secondary Air Pump, could even be the ECU if there was a short.

 

Thanks, pjinca. The two problems are unrelated - happened at different times. The thing with the misfire was actually 6 months ago, and it has not happened again since. And I have a low mileage car anyway.

The thing with the iDrive happened this last Monday and yes, everything else seems to work - but nothing that is controlled by the thing. Good thing it is about 70 deg here so I do not need heat and the car is garaged so even when colder, I get out on a warm-inside car.

I just have to wait until next Thursday to get it seen. I could go to the dealer but they may just want to swap the whole thing for mucho bucks. Hopefully Carl will find out what is wrong and fix that. It still gives me the "SOS System malfunction" display.

We'll see.

 

SOS system malfunction may be indicative of a bad TCU (Telematics Control Unit) along with the CCC - which is what happened to me. Luckily I found a good TCU on eBay for $98 and had it coded to my car when they replaced the CCC and all was good. Like I said, the dealer wanted to charge $1400 for TCU replacement/ $2800 additional for the CCC. They aren't called "stealerships" for nothing, lol.

 

I'm going to have a shop see if they can tell me what is wrong and I'll decide whether to do full dealership or get the parts online and get my shop to do the work. If my guy can't do the diagnostic - then I am stuck with either Bergman or Reeves. Gotta know what is the problem first - and yes, I do not want the stealership to tell me - "yeah, you need a new iDrive, pay at the window..." - which would be BS - car is 6 years old and a MAJOR component should not fail so completely like that. Then again, with all the coding - maybe they code them to fail at a specific time - random for every car. "Free maintenance for 4 years" is not free...

 

Well, I am dead in the water. I was going to take it to a shop for diagnosis tomorrow and when I went to get my camera out of the car today EVERYTHING was dead. It seemed as if the battery had been removed from the car. I had to use the physical key off the comfort access key-fob to open the door and nothing would light up - absolutely nothing, so I will have to get AAA to either jump it or just put it on the flatbed and take it to Reeves. I have no choice at this point.

Pisses me off to no end that such an expensive car would have such a catastrophic failure and it is barely 6 years old.

Any ideas? At this point I'd think this is beyond just the iDrive. The battery is NOT 6 years old - maybe 2.5 years old.

 

It sounds like a charging/electrical problem. Maybe alternator and/or battery. Maybe something is shorting out?