[jeffthx]

Ever since I changed my battery, both sides' climate settings revert to 70 degrees after shutting down and restarting the car. I also can't get the car to remember that I want it to unlock by using the door handle (i.e., I have to pull out the fob every time to unlock it). It WILL lock by touching the handle, however. It just won't unlock.

I have tried recoding the door settings with BimmerCode a couple times, but it keeps doing these two things after every shutdown (and, yes—I did hit "code" to save the settings).

Any thoughts or ideas about what could be causing this? If it matters, I get the "battery discharge" message any time it sits for more than a couple hours. It does start up with no issues, however. My mechanic told me that the draw was a little higher than spec, but not unusually so.

Thanks,
Jeff

[HighlandPete]

Got to ask the obvious, was the discharge there before the battery change? Why was the battery changed?

[chowser51]

Did you register the new battery?
I don’t think that it would do anything to your previous coding but just checking all the bases.

[jh_f30]

Did you replace it with the same spec battery? I assume it was brand new, but did you check the date of manufacture? If it was old stock that's been sitting around, it could have lost some of its juice.

[jeffthx]

Originally Posted by HighlandPete

Got to ask the obvious, was the discharge there before the battery change. Why was the battery changed?

Yes— it was discharging before the change—but I chalked that up to age (70k miles/4 years). I believe that the discharge may be tied to a Viper remote starter that I had installed. I should have mentioned that as well. I have an appointment to have the installer look at it next week because it isn't responding to start the car since the battery was changed.

My mechanic said he was getting a draw of .12 when he had it. He found that removing the VeePeak OBDII module that I left plugged in dropped it to .08. The spec should be around .05 I'm not an expert here, but I assume that's milliamperes. The higher draw may be caused by the starter always "looking" for a signal.

I'll throw one more thing in the mix: my mechanic did register the battery. I replaced the factory 90ah battery with a store bought 95ah. When I look in BimmerLink, it shows that I have a 91ah battery (which is the same thing it showed before I swapped it). It does show that it was registered, however, so I didn't think too much about the mismatch. Any chance this is part of the issue? I'm also the same person who had a post saying that my LED fog lights are glowing slightly when the car is off. This is a new thing that also started happening after the battery change (but the replies in that thread seemed to indicate it wasn't a big deal).

The signs are pointing to something having to do with the battery, but what? Maybe it was registered incorrectly? It's definitely the right fit for the car. The resetting of the climate settings is the weirdest thing that is happening, as I don't have any idea what would cause that to occur. The climate system otherwise works just fine.

Jeff

[jeffthx]

Originally Posted by jh_f30

Did you replace it with the same spec battery? I assume it was brand new, but did you check the date of manufacture? If it was old stock that's been sitting around, it could have lost some of its juice.

See above re: battery specs. The new one had a manufacture date of 9/18.

[jeffthx]

Just for the sake of closing this out in case someone should happen to be searching in the future with a similar type of issue: The car has (sort of) healed itself. In a different post, I described the issues I was having trying to get a remote starter system working correctly with my car. We almost got it there, but it seemed to be causing battery drain issues, and the starter system just wouldn't work consistently or reliably. In the end, I had the installer pull the system out.

Well, after the remote starter was pulled out, my LED foglights stopped glowing around the clock, the battery drain appears to have stopped, my climate system stops reverting back to 70 degrees, and my comfort access is working again. I don't know how each of these different things fits into the "cause/effect" chain, but it appears that the car was looking at the remote starter system like some sort of infection that created multiple other issues. Now that it's out, everything is back to normal. So...while I'm sure someone out there has figured out how to get a remote starter to work with the Fxx cars, I can say that it caused nothing but headaches during the few weeks that I had it in my car. And--in case anyone is wondering, my installer has owned his own shop for many years, he holds multiple industry certifications and awards, works on many high-end vehicles, and had a perfect online review rating (i.e., I didn't turn the car over to some guy just working out of his garage). He knew his stuff, but in the end, the car just didn't want to play along with us.

--Jeff