Tymm

Hi all my wifes 2006 520d has the steering lock fault, how so I find out what is at fault without taking it to the garage, I do have INPA but i've only just got it up and running and I don't yet know to much about it, any help would be good

Thanks

Stuboski

I've had that fault come up a few times. Have you tried turning your steering wheel harder to the left or the right while hitting the START button? It's worked for me in the past.

Tymm

I've just gave that a go but no luck, Thanks for the input! the steering lock works both locking and unlocking, but we have the red steering lock warning on the dash all the time,

Domrepkid

man this sucks had it happen to me out of the blue had to get it towed to dealer they cleared it and didnt have any idea where i came from but advised me that if it happened again it would be around 700 to replace and it came back while i was driving then went away thought it was going to stall out on me wish you the best

Tymm

seriously can't believe that out everyone that has read this thread only 2 other people have had this happen??????

RockChalkKU

I had this happen on ny M5 and they had to tow it away and fix it. Try a hard reset, disconnect battery and reconnect it. The worst part is that you can't do the job yourself if you have to replace it. Only BMW can do it. Its not cheap either.

Tymm

Thanks for that, I have tried a hard reset but that din't change anything, as for paying BMW to fix it when the lock works! we just have the warning light saying it's not working

02dag

This culd be the solution to the problem

HOW TO: Reset ELV counter. Steering lock RED warning - North American Motoring

Had the yellow warning light in my car for over 1,5 year. then one day it was the red error light and the car wouldnt start. My guess is that certain conditions like low battery or something similar trigged the CAS to think that the ELV malfunctioned. After a series of warnings(probably 500+ in my case) the counter reached the high limit and went into error mode.

Tymm

Thanks mate, I have inpa and ncs and some other bits, so i'll have a go at resetting it! Di you buy a new battery first or still using your old one?

02dag

No, I am still using the old one. It is good enough. In the winters it can get very cold here, as you would know. From time to time the date and time resets to zero when starting in cold(below 5+ C)weather. I think it could have been one of those times this happened. If I wait until the idrive starts up, the resetting never happens. I believe that it has something to do with the glow plugs, starter motor and Idrive. That drains a lot of power from the battery at once. This is exactly when the ELV kicks in to action too.

I had googled a lot to find a way to get rid of the warning light, but never found anything useful, so I thought I just had to live with it. Then after over a year my car wouldnt start after work, so I had to get road assistance to get it home. This particular day they were very busy, so I didnt get my car home until late in the evening. Used these hours to try once more to find a solution, and found a similar recipe. When my car came home, I used 5 minutes to reset the counters, and the problem was solved.

You can imagine how nice it was to finally enter the car without having that annoying "PLOING" sound anymore.