I thought this was my imagination! I was driving down the freeway the other day (in a bumpy, contruction zone) and it was so hard to keep the car between the lines! The steering wheel was seriously going back and forth! Although, I have only seen this once on one patch of San Francisco Bay Area freeway.

Excerpt from the Forbes article below.

http://www.forbes.com/vehicles/2004/04/12/...f_0412test.html

 

And you're definite this is caused by the active steering?

A combination of wheels as wide as 245mm and low quality/run down pavement will/may result in this kind of behaviour..

To me such behaviour seems very evident on run-down roads, using style 124 wheels, which have a 245mm/275mm (front/rear) setup. Our car is not equipped with Active Steering.

-paasan

 

I get this with my 330 (sport package) all the time on rough pavement. I think it's largely a function of the RWD nature of our vehicles. Since the directional wheels are not powered, they are more apt to be affected by road surface irregularities.

THe AFS system attempts to dial in some countersteering when it senses that the car is not going in the same direction as the wheel is pointing, and it may take some time to adjust to this behavior by not reflexively doing the same thing manually. We will simply have to train ourselves to let the system do its job and just point the wheel where we want to go and not overcompensate.

-MrB

 

No, I've driven down that stretch of road in other cars. Again, this is a rare thing I think. But in this car with active steering, the car was all over the place (more than usual). It was like driving with the steering wheel of a ship. It was constant back and forth just to go straight. Then it stopped after that stretch of the road.

I'm not talking about rough road and construction areas where the car bounces around a lot and the steering wheel wants to move around a bit. Seriously, this was a weird back-and-forth steering motion that I have NEVER felt before in another car. Seems like mostly an anomaly though (I hope). But the author of the article hit the nail on the head. He mentioned it!

I think you guys will eventually feel it and when you do, you'll know it. And you'll know that you haven't felt that in another car. It was a little weird.

But oh well, it was a short-term thing and I love this car!

 

Is your E60 an early build? The last Roundel had a small article on a problem with E60s built last year with Active Steering. Turns out that you could get into a gradual oscillation that builds up, and that sounds close to what you experienced. The article said it got fixed in later versions though, so if yours was built after November, this might be something else...

Edit: Should have read your production date The problem mentioned in Roundel should have been fixed for your Feb. build 525i

 

nice to read an article that doesn't go on about the design, but rather praises bmw for breaking out of the rut that most manufacturers are in

jonboy

 

I have the same experience as 555. I have driven both 525i (sport, non active), 525i (non sport/active) and 645i (active) on the same roads that I'm currently using my 545i Sport/active/Dynamic drive (with runflats) and my 545i is behaving like 555 stated. Probably a combination of sport/dynamic drive and 124 wheel with runflats.

Best regards,
Reine

 

I've also had the same experience in my 530i w/sport pkg, however, I've had the same exact thing happen with my 328is so I'm not sure if it's the Active Steering that is causing this.