525iSE

Well I went to the dealer today, and they diagnosed my car and everything, and found that my "alternator" needs to be replaced, and the passenger airbag needs to be replaced. I understand that there might be a fault with the airbag, etc. But why do they need to replace the alternator? And isn't the alternator related to car electricity or power supply?? Weird. I'm just curious. Anyways, the good news is they will be done with my car tomorrow evening, then I can store it and happily go on vacation.

manu

i had a similiar incident a while back. it turned out that a "gateway" computer had malfunctioned.
All my safety systems were inoperable, so i got BMW to retrieve the car, as i had no intention of driving a car with no safety systems.

It took a number of days to get the part, because i was told it was very "unusal" for the it to break.

My idrive screen contained a large red message, which unfortunately i never got a picture of it.

I was told later by BMW that none of the cars active safety systems would have worked in an accident,
so i felt justified in getting BMW to retrieve the car, even though they initially wanted me to drive it to the dealer.

Ricracing

Sorry about all this 525iSE.

You are driving a '05 E60 and they say the alternator is broken...

The alternator is actually in modern day terms the generator.

It has a 2-4 year warranty.

If the generator breaks (it charges the battery), then the battery goes dead,
it's not only Comminication Breakdown, its a total death, for the cars el. that is.


This don't seem right, something is missing...

525iSE

I dono if this applies but maybe sometimes the alternator just stalls or malfunction for a very short period of time and kicks back in. Because recently, I've noticed that sometimes my car's odometer sometimes dim out as if its about to lose all power, then kicks back in, while i'm driving. Also as this happens my throttle doesn't seem to do anything, like the car engine just stalled and about to die out, but then it kicks back in again. This has happened a few times in the past couple days even before the Restrainst System Faultly light came on. Thats how I justified it. But I'm cant be sure about this. Also my car sometimes stalls, for example when making a turn very slowly, then when my car is straight again, i accelerate hard, the car seems to stall, like my car is about to die out, then VROOM!! So maybe the new alternator may have solved these problems. Hopefully...

525iSE

It took them one evening to check the car to find the parts that was causing problems. Then the next morning order the parts from BMW Thailand, and got it in the afternoon the same day. Then I got my car back in the evening, no charge.

Anyways, I drove around with the message for 2 days, because I didn't have time to go to the dealer. And after they checked it and told me the safety systems wasn't working, I drove it again for another morning because I had to go to my far campus, believe my luck, I woke up late, so I had to drive like 180km/h+ on the express way, then I realized, I had to airbags or anything, but then again, I really needed to register for next semester, so I just went for it anyways.

madoon

525iSE ease up man...you really dont need to be driving at those speeds, espically with no airbags...
your car is back to normal so you can rest your mind and sleep in on vication.......
enjoy ur holiday dont forget to pop by every once in a while...