This forum helped before and I hope new advice will be forthcoming. I may have brought this on myself by buying the first year of a newly designed and engineered model but I rationalized this by thinking the orignal owner probably worked out the bugs over the year and 11,700 miles on the car. And of course this is a BMW and my previous ownership experience with a used 94 740il was outstanding.
This is not a complaint about the service at Seattle BMW but after writing a note to the service department about the recurring problems they need to address tommorrow I needed a place to vent and get advice.
I won't go into all the problems but two in particular won't seem to go away and a third that had to be fixed twice. The first concerns 3 SES (Service Engine Soon) warning light accompanied by a diagram of the engine and increased emmission warning. The August problem was corrected by a replaced thermostat. The December problem was addressed as follows: "ran short test and found cam sensor fault for bank #2, cleared faults. No information about what caused the fault or other action taken or needed was supplied and honestly I didn't follow up on this as I was just happy to have the problem go away.
The third occurrence will be addressed tommorrow but its a misfire that on one occassion seemed like only 4 cylinder were fired and then 6 cylinders followed by rough starts and a hunting idle. After starting the car seems to run fine at both street and freeway speeds but the idle seems to hunt. Could these last 2 be connected?
The second problem has to do with the entertainment system. I would get this clicking noise when I opened the door that seemed to be coming from the center of the dash where the single CD is. (No Nav). Sometimes this would be followed by the message "medium can not be read" or if the CD was on when the car was shut off when started it would be on FM or vis versa. Or the RDS would disappear from the FM radio. At first this couldn't be verified but in Dec. they replace ASK (?) and installed SAT radio.
This is now back without the clicking noise but the mysterious change from CD to FM or vis versa as well as the disappearign RDS setting is back.
The third problem concerns the Dynamic Drive Malfunction issue. This message would appear accompanied by a red warning in the instrument panel depicting an unstable car on a slanted road. The car would handle differently but then would disappear the next time the car would be started. The bottom line is the a control unit and valve block was replaced in Sept and again in Dec. of 05.
Since buying the car in June of 05 it has been serviced in July, August, Sept, October, December of 05 and now January of 06. Total out of service time is 27 days but a large portion of the time was to due the wait for a part from Germany in Sept..
My questions are: Could the SES malfunctions and the Dynamic Drive malfunction be connected in any way shape or form? Are the last two SES issues related? (don't think it the gas I purchased since I buy from the same Chevron station and fuel level was just below 1/2 tank.) Could I have a lemon? When the car was purchased I specifically asked if all the recall and TSB were completed on the car and was assurred they were. The reason the salesperson gave for the car being sold was a repeat customer that treats himself to a new car every year. Is there a way to verify that these issues didn't occur during the original owners time with the car? Who should I contact, BMW NA and BMW CCA or both and will they help with finding solutions to these problems? Is there anyone in particular to contact within these organizations that will be able to help?
Again, this is not a complaint with BMW Seattle as I honestly believe their service department has tried to resolve these issues but I question if they have fully investigated the problems even though they received permission to have their technician take the car home in Dec. Finally, why all these problems? I'm just frustrated, annoyed and not skilled enough to deal with the issues the car is presenting. Not knowing the reasons for the issues, having them reoccur even though they may be seperate issues but wondering if somehow they are connected is driving me bonkers.
Anyway thanks for letting me ramble and hopefully someone will offer constructive advice that will lead me to fully enjoy a car I really like and regain the confidence in the car I had with my 94 740il.

Boomer