[Btdubs1]

**New Updates In Post Comments**


Hey guys, long post ahead, thanks in advanced for anyone willing to read through it and help however they can

Around 4 months ago I upgraded from an e90 to an f30 and have been loving it - the car is a 2012 328i.

Around a month ago, the car threw a chassis stabilization error on the iDrive, aswell as a FTM error(IMPORTANT NOTE HERE: The car is a Canadian car and the FTM system works on wheels speed, not pressure sensors). After this happened I pulled over and restarted the car and it was totally fine, no errors or anything.

Around two weeks after this I had the error throw again. This time accompanied by a steering error (see photos attached). And again restarted the car and everything cleared up. Since then the car has continued this pattern with the errors throwing more and more frequently, and sometimes not going away when restarting, and other times it does. Aside from the warning lights, there is no noticeable effect on the car, however when the steering error does throw, the steering is SOMETIMES slightly stiff, its defiantly not lost all power, but I have quite abit less turning power. Another thing that has started happening is a check engine light is thrown after its happened a few times. Usually sticking around even when restarted and all the issues are cleared, however sometimes the light does go away aswell. One thing to note, the steering issue never comes on by itself, its always either after the chaise stabilization error or right alongside it.

I've done quite abit of digging here across all of the forms and any other resources I can find. However I'm not extremely car savvy so bear with me if some of these assumptions are off.
Heres some of the things I have gathered:
- Due to the steering in these cars being 100% electronic, and the car driving well others, its almost certainly an electronic issue.
- People with similar issues to this often also get an ABS error, and its often a wheel speed sensor thats the culprit. This would make sense as my car uses the wheel speed sensor for the TPMS, and the light throws 100% of the time any error is thrown, however with the ABS light now throwing it makes me slightly more skeptical that this is the issue.
- Some people mention the steering position sensor could be an issue, this would make sense due to the steering error, but I have no way to confirm this
- Battery issues and inconsistent voltages.

After It started happening more frequently and once the check engine light threw I panicked and took it to a shop (my normal indy shop was closed for a week and I took it to another indy BMW shop, I believe this to be a mistake) and they started to diagnose. The first replaced the battery which was from 2016, which seemed like a reasonable first step to no avail. They then went down a pretty deep rabbit hole of diagnosing - this is where things start to go over my head. They pulled around 30 codes on the car (see these attached at the bottom of this post aswell) and for some reason decided to replace the brake lamp sensor of all codes with no luck. They said it seemed fine and returned the car to me, and they said if it happens again (which it did driving home from the shop), they're going to have to replace the FEM model, which is a $2000 part.

Its been a week since I've picked the car up and its not any better - and I'm $1400 in the hole (10 hours labour I was billed) from this first mechanic. I took the scans into my regular indy shop and they said these guys we're using a non-bmw scanner and could were likely missing the main codes that were being thrown, and the ones they were seeing were just auxiliary codes being caused by the root issue.

I'm hoping you guys can help me with a few things here as I dont deal with this stuff very often at all.

1) Should I push back against the shop I took my car into first for a refund etc? Or is that amount of labour/diagnosing normal for an issues like this (even if not fixed)
2) Does anyone have any insight into the issue based on the scans the shop pulled (attached)

Photos/codes:

View post on imgur.com

Thanks guys, and sorry for the story book of a post.

[cfm56d7b]

Hmmm ... this appears to be one of this instances where a mechanic with insufficient experience attempted to fix the car.

The battery replacement was the right decision. But the mechanic needs to provide you with unambiguous, transparent information: what was the voltage before and what was the voltage after the replacement. 4 year old battery could be defective as well. In addition, alternator had to be tested. Then - clear all codes and see which codes will re-appear. Proceed to next diagnostic step.

There could be several issues present but the first step should be resolving any and all power supply issues. F30x vehicles have lots of electronic components.

Keep us updated!

[Btdubs1]

Originally Posted by cfm56d7b

Hmmm ... this appears to be one of this instances where a mechanic with insufficient experience attempted to fix the car.

The battery replacement was the right decision. But the mechanic needs to provide you with unambiguous, transparent information: what was the voltage before and what was the voltage after the replacement. 4 year old battery could be defective as well. In addition, alternator had to be tested. Then - clear all codes and see which codes will re-appear. Proceed to next diagnostic step.

There could be several issues present but the first step should be resolving any and all power supply issues. F30x vehicles have lots of electronic components.

Keep us updated!

Hey thanks for the reply!

Sorry should have been more clear here, the battery that was already in the car was 4 years old, and it was replaced with a brand new battery. So hoping that rules that out.

From the info he gave me it sounds like they didnt even look at the alternator, but that would likely be a good next step. I'll relay that over to the shop if I end up not being able to resolve and have to take it back in again.

thanks!

[Orion4]

This only may be part of the continuing problems, but did the shop register the new battery to the car so the car electrical management system knows the new battery and its specs?

[Btdubs1]

Originally Posted by Orion4

This only may be part of the continuing problems, but did the shop register the new battery to the car so the car electrical management system knows the new battery and its specs?

I did triple check this was done yeah, I read about the battery swap pretty extensively before bringing it into the shop as I knew that'd likely be the first step.

Since I have got the car back from the shop the issue has been no better or worse. So I dont think the new battery has had any effect on the issue either positivly or negatively.

[Btdubs1]

Update; Took the car on a weekend vacation, lots of driving on windy, bumpy roads. Error threw Saturday morning and since I have had no issues - have put around 150km on the car since.

I've heard other people with similar issues have seen the same thing after "rough" driving. Be it somehow reseting a turning sensor or maybe the bumpy roads vibrating a connection back into place.

Mind you I dont know if I'm out of the water yet as its such an intermittent issue but, fingers crossed!

thanks again for all who commented to help! I'll touch base again here in a few weeks with another update

[Btdubs1]

So after a few days of driving fine the codes started throwing again, this time worse than ever. I'm not able to clear them most times by restarting the engine as I was able to before.

I took it to the now open indy shop in town that is locally trusted and they did another scan of the car and got the attached codes.

They checked all the voltages and say everything is fine on that front, their conclusion is the ICM(integrated chassis model) likely needs to be replaced. This would make sense based on the issues im seeing after looking at this modules responsiboloities. The part is $1800 USD new from BMW, however they're working over the weekend to ensure that they're able to replace it with a used one, as they said it would need to be coded for the VIN and they want to check to make sure if they're able to swap it with any old used ICM assuming they can code it, or if it needs to be an ICM out of a car that has similar features/specs from factory.

Does anyone have any experience replacing one of these? Does this look like the right next steps based on the codes?

The shop I initially took it to mentioned it might be the FEM module, but based on the codes im seeing I think the ICM makes allot more sense, but I also have no idea.

Any help/insight at all here would be greatly appreciated, I know very little about these cars (or cars In general, really) and want to make sure im doing all the right things here and not throwing money down the drain.

thanks in advanced

Codes:

View post on imgur.com

[Legoguy9]

Hello, did the ICM end up being the fix for your issues ?