Complete electrical failure

ChasD

Member
Had to get my Z4 towed back to dealership today due to a complete and total electrical failure, car just went dead. Fortunately I was only reversing out of a parking spot at 1 mph rather than doing 70 on a motorway. Anyway car just stopped as if stalled but with no electrics at all. Couldn't remove key or lock doors or get into boot, nothing!!!!! Interesting that the gauges all still show what they were when the car stopped i.e rev counter at 900 rpm, temp and fuel at working levels and couldn't reset. AS battery etc are in boot, the rescue service couldn't do anything other than a tow back to dealer. Inevitably warranty out just over two months, no idea of what fault is or what cost and of course it's Friday so not looked at till Monday. Can't find any other mention of this on forums- anybody any ideas?
 
there are points under the bonnet where he could have tried jump leads, this may have put power to things
 
Year was Sept 2009 two months out of warranty!! not even a big mileage, only 23k.

The rescue guy tried to put power on the points under bonnet but no effect!!
 
first of all welcome to all the zedness you can ever need . apart from the answer to your problem it seems ?
its a strange one & i for one am interested in the outcome so please keep us posted .
in the meantime to cheer you up why not show us some pics of the "deceased" :)
we,re happy to see Zeds whatever the mechanical situation :thumbsup:
 
Will keep posted once an answer is found, intend to get as much tech info as possible for negotiation with BMW about a refund of cost of repair, they should be quite concerned that this has happened and could happen at speed, I was lucky!!! Anyhow, feel a lack of trust in the car now and are going to need a lot of convincing that this is a one off. We'll see on Monday (I hope!!)
 
might be a complete failure of the battery. Odd for a 3 year old battery, but not impossible!
 
Very odd..

I dare say it has something to do with the intelligent battery sensing system..

Did the AA man lift off the battery terminal and check battery voltage to isolate if fault was with battery or car?
 
Z4M-2006 said:
Very odd..

I dare say it has something to do with the intelligent battery sensing system..

Did the AA man lift off the battery terminal and check battery voltage to isolate if fault was with battery or car?

i had a similar "shutdown" on previous 6 series which my tech thought was the I B S . turned out to be alternator totally draining battery within 10miles of any charge & causing everything to cease operation . including the hazards ! ! ending up giving myself I B S :P
 
Car now fixed, believe it or not it was a loose connection from battery to the fuse box, but as I said before all this is in the boot and it needs electrics to open. There is no emergency manual over ride!!!! So they had to trace wiring diagram elesewhere on the car to find circuit for boot and apply power independently, this they did and fixed connection, there was a nut missing (WHY???). Took them nearly three hours of labour but only charged me for 1.5, but at dealer prices this was still £150 plus vat!!!, all to replace a nut costing 59p. Total bill £177.83p Going to have to figure out why nut was missing rather than loose beside location, only other time this could have happened was the time the roof failed and a lot of elec. work was required, hmmm might write a letter about that, all repairs were done by same dealer.
 
Glad its sorted but i would have thought that putting jump leads on bonnet bonnet connection would have overcome the problem whilst they where connected

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
 
Suprised they charged you...

Its obviously nothing you have done and is a manufacturers fault,or a subsequent fault of a BMW tech to put the car back together properly..

I wouldnt be too happy at coughing up...
 
Taz x said:
Glad its sorted but i would have thought that putting jump leads on bonnet bonnet connection would have overcome the problem whilst they where connected
Jump leads essentially connect directly to battery. Since the circuit break is at the fuse block, the jump leads are on the battery side of the break and the boot release electrics are on the other side. :headbang:

Missing nut had to be when they were faffing about with the electrics earlier. They should be paying you (OP) for the trouble.
 
I would be pushing for compensation or reinbursement as surely the dealer messed up when they last worked on the car?

Tim.
 
Might try a letter to see the reaction, only problem might be that previous work was a long time ago so they could argue that too much time has elapsed and "other things" could have happened tocauseproblem. But we'll see!
 
Also, still can't believe there is not an emergency manual overide to get into the boot, especially as so much electrics are in there, and it needs electrics to open!
 
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