I've been really surprised that I haven't seen posts on this, but I've been driving my 545 for about 2 weeks now and noticed almost immediately that the steering wheels is slightly offset to the left (mine is a US lhd model).

Sitting straight on, the left directional indicator is plainly visible, but the right one is blocked by the steering wheel rim. Also, I can follow the wheel's roundel straight up to the instrument cluster and it is clearly off center. Has anyone else noticed this?

 

I've seen others post about this and mine is off by a hair as well. I think it's a function of Active Steering getting mis-calibrated (is that a word?)

I think there's some way for the dealer to reset things but I'm going to wait a while before bringing it up with them. I don't want some gorilla fixing it by taking the airbag out, loosening the nut behind the wheel (no, not me ), pulling the wheel off then sticking it back on again. I also don't want them screwing around with any front-end alignment, etc.

Once I've seen enough information to prove whether I'm right that there's some sort of AS calibration reset procedure, I'll then let them know about it.

I'll let other cars in my area be guinea pigs!

 

I just checked mine today and didn't notice any mis-alignment of the wheel relative to the instrument cluster. The roundel on the wheel is right in the middle, underneath the check control and OBC windows. I don't think it's something endemic to AFS equipped E60's

-MrB

 

I think what happened to my car is that the wheel started out centered. One day I was playing around with AS turning the wheel back and forth to show someone how far the wheels moved while not moving very fast.

I was doing this while backing up slowly. I ended up stalling the car as I was moving the steering wheel back and forth. I saw an Active Steering Malfunction warning in the HUD. I turned the car off and then back on again.

A day or so later, I realized the wheel was off center by a few millilmeters and I'm thinking that my earlier incident caused the calibration to be off a bit.

I've heard of others with bigger off-center errors and the dealer fixed it by doing something to reset AS.

 

Rudy - I read somewhere that when AS fails that you have to move your steering wheel from all the way left back to all the way right, right after you restart the car. This should recalibrate AS. I dunno if this will still work since you already restarted your car.

 

Thanks for the tip Johan. Maybe I can stall it again on purpose and try out your suggestion.

Something tells me the dealer can fix it. It's such a slight misalignment that I'm not in any hurry to get it fixed. I just want to be sure that the tech doesn't immediately grab a wrench and start adjusting things the old fashioned way.