Hello,

I am looking to buy a 545i sport model, and I found one on the net that has an attractive price. However, the photo of the i-drive screen shows the following warning: "Steering! Stop vehicle carefully". Has anyone seen this warning before? This car is listed as a certified pre-owned vehical by a BMW dealership that is not very close to my home. Is this a tell-tale sign of a major problem?

Thanks in advance

Dean

frontiero1@verizon.net

 

Hard to say. Often times these warnings will come up and go away as fast as they came. Other times, they could mean the car needs servicing. I've seen a similar steering warning when my car was a bit low on steering fluid -- topping it off made the warning go away for good.

As I said though, it's hard to say what's going on here and obviously buying a used car can be risky. You'd think that the guy taking the photos would be able to take the pictures without that warning visible...

 

Must be a sensor problem within the AS (Active Stearing) system.

The sensors, and the E60 is full of them, tend to malfunction sometimes.

The sensors costs about 10 bucks, but changing them can be costly.

If you'll go for a used E60, buy it from a BMW dealer and get a warranty.
In the long run that's money saved.

 

What gets me, is this is listed by a bmw dealer as a cpo vehicle. Is the CPO checklist a load of bull crap? Obviously this car didn't go through any sort of inspection/reconditioning prior the wash & vacuum.

Dean

 

Dean, in my light experience (3 CPO?s) the CPO checklist is BS; it seems to me that the tech?s just signoff on it and that the used car sales manager does the same thing. They only good thing about it is that if something happen they will fix it BUT do not be surprised that you get some pushback. I love both me my 545i?but they have come with more trips to the dealer than one would think. And both of the dealers that are close to me suck both in knowledge and customer service.

 

Does the CPO warrantee of 2/50,000 cover bumper to bumper or just powertrain, which might exclude electronic$?

 

This can be a problem within the active steering mechanism of this vintage. Caveat emptor.

 

Sounds suspicious, get the VIN of the vehicle and then call a different BMW dealer, ask the service manager to check the VIN for warranty work, this could tell you what kind of issues the car may have had. There are a lot of good used CPO e60's out there, you may have to keep shopping.

 

I use to get this from time to time, but turning off and restarting the car always remedied the problem.

I found that driving the car quickly or somewhat aggressively right after start up somewhat coincided with this warning light.

 

Well I checked out the car (Herb Chambers of Boston). When I get there they inform me that the car is NOT a CPO vehicle. (ph@ck!) This car was stated as a CPO car in both autotrader.com, cars.com as well as being listed as a CPO on the bmwusa.com site. What a waste of time.

This car was filthy inside and out. The wheels looked like crap, it needed brakes and it had a scraped headlight with a broken frame. The right front quarter panel and the hood were repainted. All of the tires had uneven wear, which leads me to think that the suspension is extremely worn.

Obviously this dealer had never touched the car, yet bmwusa.com has it listed as a CPO. I'll definately avoid this dealer in the future.

END

Dean