Strange electric problems, E34 -96

[e34briliant]

This is my first post here and I live in Sweden so excuse me if my english isn't always the best!

I bought a 1996 E34 525i in december and the car had then been standing still, outside, for a few months. Before that the car had been in Greece since 2005 and only used 1 month each year.

The problems I have with the car is:
-I can't lock the car with the remote key, I can lock it manually but only 1 or 2 doors will then lock.
-If I lock the car with the remote the alarm will go off in a few seconds
-I never lock the car so sometimes when I come to the car and opens a door, the side indicators starts to blink. This is turned off by hitting the indicator-button in the car (in front of the window lifters) twice. If I turn of the alarm on the key, nothing happens.
-There electric window lifters isn't working as they should, they often stop halw way.
-One time the windshield wipers stopped to work, but then started to work again

Can anyone here help me? I have checked the fuse (80A) coming from the battery and it seems to be OK, I also wiried past it and nothing changed. I have replaced the general module, relay module and the check control module. But with no difference. The only thing that happened was that when I mounted the new GM, the whole car locked itself.

And also, if I lock the whole car, the rear doors are really hard to unlock. The door pins must be moved upwards with alot of power! Same with the drivers door.

When I bought the car the floor mat behind the drivers seat was frozen! Like it had come water or snow into the car and then it froze. So I had it in garage for 2 days with heat blowing straight at the floor mat and it helped. But I'm thinking that maybe water/snow also came in to the electrics under the backseat (left side) since its near?

The guy who had the car before me (talked to him today) never had any problems like this. And when he took the car back to Sweden in august he left it for sale at a car company where I bought it in december. The battery was dead when I picked it up and the problems with the electrics was a fact. So something happened in the time august - december - but what?

Anyone, please? Swedish forums won't help... :S

[BMWDriver]

Oh my! Electric gremlins galore! I had problems with my doors because of one 7A fuse that was toast, one fuse that was under the backseat.

Do you have the BMW alarm, or is it an aftermarket? There is a procedure here in the forums if you do a search to properly synchronize the remote with the keyless module.

Normally, I don't think you are supposed to be able to unlock the doors by pulling the pins unless there is no power to the car. They either all come up from when the front passenger or driver lift theirs when the car is running, or they stay shut - you lift them but they go right back down or don't lift at all. They should also all unlock when you unlock the driver's or passenger's door with the key.

Humidity could be cause for short-circuits perhaps?

Being a 96, is it a touring? And, hey, welcome to the forum!

[BMWDriver]

Maybe this could help: http://www.bimmernut.com/forum/5-series-bmw/40754-e34-key-fob.html

[e34briliant]

Thanks for the answer! It's not a Touring, it's a very wellkept Arctissilber Sedan in totally original appearance :) The only thing that is not from the fabric on it is a BMW 6-CD Changer and a storing device (BMW Original) in front of the gearknob.

The alarm is BMW Original, yes.

I'll go down to the car soon and do that key fob thing with both keys and replace the batteries in them and check everything around the GM & RM. Hope it helps...!

BTW, nice picture in your signature, reminds me of my old 1992 Brillant red 525i with 540i bumper :)

[BMWDriver]

Thanks, it's a drawing I made, a self-portrait with an e34. Mine is actually metallic black and does not have brake ducts as in the drawing, but I thought it looked better in red.

You should post some pictures of your ride when you get a chance!

[BennyM]

This won't solve all the issues, but it might help with some:
First, pair your remote with the alarm system as mentioned above.
Then, try manually pushing and pulling on the lock knobs for each door a bunch of times. If they don't get used often or get wet/dirty/rusty, they will not lock. The General Module will continue to tell the Alarm that some doors aren't locked, and after a certain a mount of time, the alarm will sound the siren and flash the lights. Later, when you return to the car and open the door again, I believe the lights will start flashing once again to alert you that the alarm thinks that the car has been tampered with.

I hope that helps.

[e34briliant]

I tried to pair the remotes to the alarm yesterday but I found no alpine/alarm box under the backseat? Where should it be?

What I DID find under the backseat, and under all the electrics where GM & RM is located was water! Not much, but still! Water! So I dried it out and cleaned all the contacts with CRC Eletronics spray. But it didn't help for nothing. I also tried mounting the original GM and RM but then the car wouldn't start! So I re-mounted a GM from a 1993 M5 and then it started...

I have 4 used central locking engines (spelling?) for each door, is it worth mounting them? I can't see that the problem is with them, it should be something else...

Also, on a Swedish forum someone told me to check all the ground points - but where are they?


BMWDriver: I don't have any good pictures of this E34 but here is pictures of some BMW's I've had:
Garaget | BMW 525i (1992) (http://www.garaget.org/?car=28014)
Garaget | BMW 540iA (1997) (http://www.garaget.org/?car=187222)
Garaget | BMW 518i Executive (1995) (http://www.garaget.org/?car=183534)
Garaget | BMW 528iA (1996) (http://www.garaget.org/?car=183528)

[tim eh?]

well it looks like you have found the answer to your "So something happened in the time august - december - but what?" question. Relay module controls doors,wipers,windows, i would check that out especially seeing as the GM was fried too, but there are plenty of suspects down there. i don't think replacing the lock actuators would help at all it sounds like the actuators work fine.

[e34briliant]

Exactly! Because the wipers are messed up now, and the windows too.

But I have tried with the original RM, a replacement RM and also cleaned the contacts with Electronics Cleaner.

What is the next step? :S

[Mr._Graybeard]

You need the BMW electrical troubleshooting manual. Here's a copy for 1995 -- should be pretty applicable.
http://shark.armchair.mb.ca/~dave/BMW/e34/e34_95.pdf

[BennyM]

Yeah, I take back what I suggest before now that I know water was in the back seat (that's some serious flooding to get in there!). The doors are probably OK. The wiper relays probably need to be replaced as well.

[tim eh?]

What is the next step? :S
well you are probably looking in the right place at least... check as much as you can down there. also under the carpet in front of the back seat there are some major wires down there. i would compare the old gm with the new one are they the same serial#? did the symptoms change at all while you were doing the module swaps?

[e34briliant]

The original GM and the "new" one probably don't have the same serial number but I don't think that matters. I've switched CCM, GM, and RMs in alot of E34s (and E32s) over the years and it has never been any problems. Some people replace RM on early E34s that don't have auto-up passenger side window to a RM from a later E34 to get that function. So the only difference, i think, when switching to another module is that you can loose some functions.

When the ice melted from the floor mat I think it was pretty easy for it to get in under the electronics since there is a gap between the floor and the metal frame coming up to the backseat (if you understand in my bad english :) )

When I mounted the GM from the M5 it was the same errors as before but after a week or two the windows, windshield wipers and sunroof stopped working. The wipers now only work in the fastest mode. But yesterday the car wouldn't start with the original GM, only with the M5-one.

So what I'll do now is the following? :
-Replacing all the relays around the GM and RM
-Checking the wiring underneath the floor mat behind the drivers seat

Or ?


Also, I got to say, the knowledge and how fast you guys reply here is really great! Compared to Swedish BMW forums about these problems!

[BMWDriver]

Ouch, that was a super nice red e34!

[JoeGons]

My E34 was flooded once. Vacuumed out the water and it took days to dry out.
After that I had a few strange things going on. Still do.
Doors locking and unlocking on their own etc.
The Stealer told me it is probably a bad ground connection and that I must remove all the interior carpet in order to find the problems.
I left it alone, expecting to do it MUCH later.
The problems, (all but one) went away after six months or so.
The only problem I have now is an electrical drain of about 240ma when the car is asleep.
This causes the battery to run down if the car is not used for several weeks.
Some say this is normal for these cars.
Really not good enough.

If you could really heat up the inside of the car and really dry it out, that might help.
I think the suggestion to find the brown coloured ground connections and clean them up may well be a good start.
A lot of work but not too technical.
That BMW electrical troubleshooting manual that Graybeard sent you will help find the connection points. (That is the hard part)

Good luck.
Joe

[e34briliant]

Next week (if everything goes as planned) I will take my 330Ci out of the garage to drive that one instead of the 525i which was my ride over the winter. Then I will park the 525i in the garage and remove front and backseat etc. and remove the interior carpet and let it dry. The temperature in the garage is 15 - 20 degrees. That should do it..

But can some cables coming to the GM and RM be burned? I mean, if they got wet it could easily cause a short circuit somewhere? And maybe some of the hundred cables going to the RM/GM-box got burned?

If I find a 95/96 E34 on a scrapyard, can I remove the RM/GM box with all the fuses and relays and ALL the wiring harnesses coming to them? Or is that pretty much impossible? Where do all the cables go? Guess it's TOO much work switching all that...


BMWDriver: Thanks! I used to have a black leather Alpina/Recaro interior in it but I sold that interior before I sold the car, the pictures you saw was taken just before I sold it with a regular leather interior...

[JoeGons]

If water got into the GM and RM the car must have had a lot of water in it.
I would want to know how so much water got into the car.
With the carpet out, I would check all the “ground” connections I can find and use some WD40 to finish the job.
Joe

[e34briliant]

I don't know for sure if water got all the way in to GM and RM and I find it hard to believe too, but what I know is that water was on the cables coming to the connectors for both GM and RM. And it was really close to the connectors. And also, the holes in the connectors where the pins from the modules go in, it was brown. Like it had been water there...

All i know is that the car was in Greece 2005-2010 and was working fine. Then it came back to Sweden in august 2010 and was parked outside at a car company until I bought it in the end of november. And when I bought it was covered in snow and when I washed it off and was going to remove the velour floor mats and only use rubber mats during the winter, I noticed the massive ammount of ICE in the floor carpet! So my guess is that water or snow got in there somehow when it was parked in Sweden since it was working perfectly before that...

[JoeGons]

And you know it was working perfectly before because --- ????

Well, you have your work ahead.
J

[genphreak]

Your GM and RM will not have been flooded, the water would have had to have been up to the seats to do that. Water can drain well from an e34 pan as there are holes at the base of the far sides of the rear seat mounts - also there are rubber bungs in the front foot-wells that you can poke up/through to allow drainage (sealed at factory). Understand that in the carpet insulation (1-5" of foam) there will be water that will drain effectively out- but what you really need is heat/sunshine to warm the whole car and then leave the windows open to get the damp air out. Here in Oz this was easy for me.

Common cause for water in e34s is water filling the sunroof cassette as the drainage holes can get blocked by leaves/muck. Water overfills the cassette, leaks down the turrets (any or all all 4) and ends up under the carpet (you can't see this happening if you are inside the car, since this is a BW and nothing should be straight forward :)

The good news is an easy root-cause fix can be achieved using a vacuum cleaner, garden hose, duct tape. tape the hose to the vacuum cleaner. open the sunroof Poke the hose into each corner of the sunroof cassette and suck out the leaves. close roof, job done.

Fixing your gremlins... good news is that all your trouble is in the rear power distribution box area. Remove it and check for corrosion in the wires that terminate in each connector. Esp the little ones feeding the RM and the DWA-IV unit that is hidden behind the dist box frame and the seat base. Don't mix up the relays, but pull the whole thing out. If you loose patience with the state of the wires, you can easily remove the seats (with teh right torx) and pull the carpets up to replace the body wiring harness (connectors linking to the fuse box/engine bay are hard up to the firewall half way up the left hand foot-well.

Find a loom from another car, a 95- 96 is best, and you will have the same colour wires to deal with and it will sort your problem, unless you have a damaged GM/RM, but I think you can test those ok :)

I've posted before on this, you can look up my prev posts and you will see more.

The most important thing to know is that contact cleaner won't help if the wires have oxidised down from a joint or break in the insulation as oxidation this creates high resistance which can upset operation of the modules being fed. I doubt any problems with grounds whatsoever (these are very good location/quality in e34). Current drain will happen if the protection relay is triggered, which is probably your trouble as your wipers (lo,med), radio, locks, windows are all out. The relay itself will stay warm (it is NC so in this state is energised) and you'll hear it tick whenever connecting the battery.

Will be about 250mA draw as a PP said, normally the car should have nominal draw of around 40mA. best to fix or your battery will die and you'll get tired of not being able to do basics like locking the car up... good luck resolving, I hope this helps and - for sure update us so people know what solved your problem- this one is common and I too have a car with teh same probs awaiting a replacement loom (no corrosion) that I have in the garage for >6 months but have had no time to put in!

[JoeGons]

genphreak,
"if the protection relay is triggered"
Where is this relay?
Also, does one just pull the GM out of is there a locking mechanism that holds it in place?
thanks

Joe

[e34briliant]

JoeGons: I know that because I spoke to guy owning the car when it was in Greece a few days ago...He was really surprised about this and he also said the the owner before him works at BMW here in town so first I thought I would go to see him but that won't do any good I think...even if he works at BMW.

genphreak: Thanks for all the info. I turned the rear power distribution box upside-down last week and the cables coming to it (e.g. to the GM) was wet. But since I didn't have time to remove interior carpet etc since I'm driving the car everyday I only dried up the water I could see. I was also thinking that there must be water in the interior carpet foam...

So my plan now is to park the car in my garage when I take out my 330Ci and leave it with open rear windows (since the front ones can't be opened) for like 2 weeks and then remove the front seats and also the backseat (the car has through-loading system so the sitting part of the backseat can't just be lifted up) and then lift out the interior carpet. Then remove all the wiring harnesses coming from the rear power distribution box and replace them with ones from a fully funtioned E34.

But do you mean that those harnesses are going from the rear power distribution box and then to the front fuse box and around in that area? If so is the case, then the change won't be too hard. The only hard thing will be to find replacement harnesses! :)

I will also replace the GM, RM and all the relays back there with fresh ones...

There's no need to check all the ground points?

"Current drain will happen if the protection relay is triggered, which is probably your trouble as your wipers (lo,med), radio, locks, windows are all out. "@
That's correct but the radio works without any problems. What relay is this you are talking about and where is it located?

"Will be about 250mA draw as a PP said, normally the car should have nominal draw of around 40mA. best to fix or your battery will die and you'll get tired of not being able to do basics like locking the car up"@
When I bought the car I had to change the car battery since the old one was dead (but still pretty new) so that makes sense...

Ofcourse I will write here what happens so that anyone with similiar problems can get some info and help..

Thanks alot for your answer...!

[JoeGons]

I think the current drain info was for me. That is my remaining problem.
I also need to know where the relay is.

Please take a few photos as you go with the removal of the carpet.

I don't think you should completely remove the carpet that might require cutting it in the area of the firewall.

It is not likely that the water was more that 10cm deep in the car.

I suggest you dry it out and lift the carpet in a way that will allow you to check the wiring and connectors that might have got wet.

I would not change the harness unless you still have a problem after trying known working GM and RM modules.
There are other relays under the rear seat that you should check for corrosion at the connectors.


Joe

[genphreak]

Best check out the parallel thread and Shogun's contribution... here
http://www.bimmernut.com/forum/5-series-bmw/43410-windows-door-locks-sunroof-started-working.html

"There are no conincidences, just logical occurances to anyone that knows half of what is actualy happening".

[e34briliant]

Thanks, I will post photos when I start working on this.

I checked some relays and they are..like brown colored on the connecting pins...what does that mean?

[e34briliant]

I've stored the car in my garage now and I removed the rear part of the floor mat. And it was WET!! Look at the pictures I took and the videos:
IMAG0081.jpg - 0.86MB (http://www.zshare.net/image/88766047f60e8722/)
IMAG0084.jpg - 1.08MB (http://www.zshare.net/image/88766072dc9bd0a7/)
IMAG0085.jpg - 0.89MB (http://www.zshare.net/image/8876608758dac0bf/)
VIDEO0002.3gp - 6.87MB (http://www.zshare.net/download/8876619261156ed5/)
VIDEO0003.3gp - 4.92MB (http://www.zshare.net/download/88766229b56bf78a/)
VIDEO0004.3gp - 2.62MB (http://www.zshare.net/download/88766268230a7758/)
VIDEO0005.3gp - 10.15MB (http://www.zshare.net/download/88766361f3128cf3/)

I'm trying to get a hold of new wiring harnesses and will also remove the front part of the floor mat as you can see its pretty wet too! I wonder what happened to the car!

[632 Regal]

New Orleans flood victim sale? Whats the carfax say?

[tim eh?]

ewwww it's ugly down there. i guess check the sunroof drains, another possibility I suppose you could check the wheel-well covers... I had a crack in one and water got into the car through that, but if the car was sitting the whole time I don't think that would be the cause. Best of luck with this!

There are a lot of 30amp fuses in the back there, I would replace them all with brand new ones especially if the connectors have turned brown!