Idrive display repeatedly opens & closes

Murgins · Post by **Murgins** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 9:04 pm

My Idrive display repeatedly opens & closes every 20 seconds. Any ideas anyone?

B21 · Post by **B21** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 9:52 pm

Usually it’s an issue with communication with the rest of the audio / nav system…

It can be a faulty unit…

In my case it was damp obstructing the optical connector in the MOST network..

Usually if yiou run the car for say 2 hours if it stabilises it’s that MOST type issue , if after it’s still resetting then it’s probably the idrive unit..

As usual a decent fault code reader is your first port of call…

Murgins · Post by **Murgins** » Sun Jul 24, 2022 10:44 pm

I’m afraid that if I run the car for 2 hours, the display motor would burn out opening and closing every 20 seconds.

B21 · Post by **B21** » Mon Jul 25, 2022 10:26 am

If it’s every 20 seconds then I tend to agree…requires fault code diagnostics

Murgins · Post by **Murgins** » Tue Jul 26, 2022 11:05 pm

I brought the car to BMW today for an old recall to the "Program Control Unit". I'm hoping that any upgrade done to the idrive will miraculously solve the problem. But just in case, if I disable the idrive display by means of locating the fuse...will the car still be driveable with everything else working? If so, which is the correct fuse? Cheers

AnubisZed · Post by **AnubisZed** » Tue Jul 26, 2022 11:26 pm

Murgins wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 11:05 pm I brought the car to BMW today for an old recall to the "Program Control Unit". I'm hoping that any upgrade done to the idrive will miraculously solve the problem. But just in case, if I disable the idrive display by means of locating the fuse...will the car still be driveable with everything else working? If so, which is the correct fuse? Cheers

Fuse 76 feeds the CID and nothing else.
Removing this fuse will not only prevent it from raising and lowering, it also won't illuminate or display anything.

Murgins · Post by **Murgins** » Wed Jul 27, 2022 9:52 pm

First off, I’d like to thank you for your help. Got the car back from the recall work at BMW and no change. I removed the #76 fuse so the display doesn’t go up and down but the radio continues to go on and off every 20 seconds. I’d like to pull the fuse for that. The fuse info card shows 7 fuse numbers for the radio, which one is correct? Cheers

Chippie · Post by **Chippie** » Wed Jul 27, 2022 10:33 pm

The only help I can give is start at the lower number and work your way up until it doesn’t come on.

B21 · Post by **B21** » Wed Jul 27, 2022 10:50 pm

AnubisZed · Post by **AnubisZed** » Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:29 am

Arr, right so it's your headunit turning on and off which is activating the screen. So nothing wrong with the screen then.
Sounds like the control circuit within the headunit is faulty. There are people who advertise on eBay that say they can repair headunits, but it's not cheap, possibly a good idea to contact one of these and see what they say. Just replacing the headunit though would be quicker but probably a lot more expensive, you're looking at around the £500 (if you can find one) and around another £100 to get it coded to your car, whereas these eBay guys charge around £350 to repair your existing one (depending on fault I'd assume).

Another option would be to see if someone would be willing just to swap over their headunit to see if that solved the problem, at least this way it would confirm what I'm suggesting.

Murgins · Post by **Murgins** » Thu Aug 04, 2022 3:55 am

So, I did find a unit to swap and it turns out to be my head unit that is the problem. Next step is to find a used one but not having too much success. Any help locating one would be great. TheID on unit is; BMW 6512 CI 9 214 941 01. I'm located in Toronto, Canada. Thanks

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