[TooManyHobbies]

Start the car, every warning light in the dash turns on, iDrive screen goes blank, needles bounce around then I see that lovely message telling me there is an electrical system failure and I shouldn't drive my car.

I checked to see if my car was part of the battery cable recall, it is not. I did get a letter about the blower motor recall but have not had that done yet. I the car has somewhere around 70K miles on it. The USB power port in the console hasn't worked since I bought the car last year, maybe a short?

Before I start trying to diagnose this, I thought I'd check in to see what you guys think.

[dmanb2b]

Originally Posted by TooManyHobbies

Start the car, every warning light in the dash turns on, iDrive screen goes blank, needles bounce around then I see that lovely message telling me there is an electrical system failure and I shouldn't drive my car.

I checked to see if my car was part of the battery cable recall, it is not. I did get a letter about the blower motor recall but have not had that done yet. I the car has somewhere around 70K miles on it. The USB power port in the console hasn't worked since I bought the car last year, maybe a short?

Before I start trying to diagnose this, I thought I'd check in to see what you guys think.

Bad battery, ground or power cable, rdc or frm

[BB_cuda]

Check battery voltage with multi meter. Things go coo coo at around ~11.9 VDC and lower.

[TooManyHobbies]

Thanks guys, I suspect it was the battery. I didn't check it but because I don't drive much in the summer and when I do it's to get something with my truck, I guess the battery was low. Now that I'm driving the car every day, I've not seen the warning. All has been well for a few weeks. Thanks again. Being kind of old school I wouldn't think a low battery would cause so many issues. It makes sense though.