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BMW 3-Series (E90 E92) Forum > E90 / E92 / E93 3-series Technical Forums > AUDIO/VIDEO + BLUETOOTH + Electronics/Alarm/Software > CAN Bus Gremlins and Towing Adventure



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      04-02-2020, 02:04 PM   #1
gofas
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Drives: BMW e90 328xi
Join Date: Jun 2019
Location: Nebraska

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CAN Bus Gremlins and Towing Adventure

Preliminary Details:
E90 328 Xdrive
96k miles
Standard Transmission
No IDrive or Logic 7
Eonon 7" Aftermarket head unit
Carly connected car OB2 Dongle
Exhaust loud enough to shake your teeth out
Active Autowerke stage 1 ECU tune

Main Story:
The current state of affairs has required me to vacate my college dorm room. The only problem with this is that my parents live ~500mi from my college and I have a knack for acquiring useless junk, among this pile being a motorbike and set of summer wheels and tires for the bim. My e90 is my only mode of transport and, being in college, I am of course short of funds, therefore I opted to tow a Uhaul behind my beloved street menace. To do this, I ordered a curt branded class II towing hitch p/n:11033 and a flat four-pin wiring kit p/n:56146. I installed both of these myself, along with a ball mount, ball, and clevis pin. I figure the mechanical installations have no merit to be in this story but I will detail the wiring. I followed the supplied instructions to carefully piggyback crimp leads onto the turn, brake, and lamp wires on the plugs for the taillights. I found which wire does what by metering each and seeing which had a change in voltage when I press the brakes, turn on headlamps, etc. Lastly, the wiring unit was wired directly to the battery through a 15 amp fuse and grounded to the metal guard over the battery (not the metal band in the red plasticy bit). The whole time I was connecting the wires, the battery was disconnected from the car. When tested, the installed wiring kit behaved perfectly normally. The next day I go out to get some moving dollys and fill up the tank and surprise the radio has stopped working. To be ultra-specific, it is a fifteen-minute highway drive to the shop with the moving carts, on the way there the radio did not function, on the way back, about halfway home, surprise the TPS warning light comes on, meaning it has lost signal to one of the tires. I think to myself and confirm that none of the wheels have fallen off (a different story) and since I have just had all of the sensors replaced when I put my winters on then it must be a gitch. I get out my code reader, while driving, clear the code and it goes away. I stop for fuel and turn off the car, insert gasoline into the tank, start the car and the radio turns on. I think 'wow how convenient' and drive home. Just to test my luck, when I get home I turn the car off and on and off and throughout that the radio did not come back on *sigh. I spend the rest of the evening metering everything I can possibly find about the radio wiring loom. I tried plugging in the stock radio and I find that it works fine, save for the soul-piercing whine that it produces (the reason I got rid of it in the first place). After running through a slurry of possible solutions and problem spots I'm about to give up, but then, just for fun, I try clearing all codes then unplugging and plugging the radio's CAN bus decoder (now referred to as 'the box'). It works. But now the radio won't turn off. I unplug the box, the radio turns off. At this point, I'm just glad to have any solution, so I call it a day. The next couple days I'm scouring the forums for anything relevant but by the time I need to leave, I turn up dry. Sunday morning, my mate shows up, we grab some road snacks and take off. To not go mental on this trip I've grabbed my Bluetooth speaker and tossed it in the cupholder. We make it the first 200 ish miles, no problem, no radio, we stop to pick up one of my roommates and forge on. At about 350 to 400 miles deep, excrement hits the turbine. My entire dash lights up with all types of warnings, the needles have gone bezerk, eventually freezing while reading 75 mph and 0 RPMs, I was going 80 mph at about 3k. The dust settles and I'm left with warning lights for brake, ABS, and 4x4 and the radio on. As soon as I can I pull off to an exit and read out the codes, I didn't save them but most, if not all, referred to a CAN bus error. I tried clearing but no change. I stop the engine and try to restart, the starter runs for what seems like an eternity and the motor kicks on. At this point, I'm assuming my wiring job has completely hosed the car and I hop out to pull the fuse on the wiring. I go to open the trunk but it's locked, I try my fob and it does nothing, I try the dash button and it does nothing, I try the button near the hood latch and it does nothing. I go for the trunk handle one more time, and it opens. I pull the fuse, start the car, which goes normally, and I've got no warnings. I make it probably another 50 miles down the road and the whole thing repeats itself, only this time I don't lose my needles so I decided to press on to reach the university. I get to the university, stop for a minute to clear the codes, which works and head off to get the Uhaul. In order to get the trailer, I needed to replace the fuse I took out earlier and I'll note here that it was left in for the remainder of the journey. I parked the car at Uni and we spent about 4 hours loading up. When we left I no longer had any of the warnings from before and as a preventative measure, I completely disconnected the radio thinking it may be the troublemaker. We make it about 200 miles before I start experiencing the same symptoms. I stop at a truck stop to see if I can clear any of the codes and get back use of my cruise control but no luck as they all come back immediately. At this time I did look through all of the ~30 or so codes my scanner was picking up; all of them in some form referenced a CAN-bus error or timeout and specifically, I know there was an engine error that referenced COMBI which I believe translates to gauge cluster if I remember right. I continue on from this stop, resolved to fly dead stick for the remaining 300 miles. Not too long after, maybe 50 miles, I need to make an unplanned stop for fuel as having three average size dudes and a 1800lb trailer in tow has significantly brought down my MPGs (down to 16 from my average highway of 22 if you're curious). After stopping at some small station and getting some questionable 91 octane, I restarted and all codes had once again disappeared. The car, at last, had settled and for the remainder of the trip, I had no issue.

Follow up:
A few days later and I have had no problems with the car until one afternoon I go to move the car into the shed and immediately the instruments freak out and the same issues come back. I move it into the shed and walk away.

Notes:
- my hypothesis is that this is all somehow temperature-related seeing as the issue didn't show up initially unit mid-day (peak heat around 65F) and it went away after dark (temps dropped to 33F) and when the problem happened again recently the car was sitting outside in the sun and it was a 75° day
- I still have yet to reinstall any radio in the car
- The issue happened with and without trailer hooked up
- I never experienced any mechanical issues
- Prior to this, the only known issue with the car was a burnt-out driver side halo
- The car is currently in my shed getting ST coil overs installed, so I have plenty of time to get this sorted
- The car has never had any issue similar to this before

TD;DR
I drove 1000 mi in 24 hrs and gauges go spaz plz help.
Appreciate 0
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328, cluster, electrical, radio, towing

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