SES Light Saga

bertsulli · 04-09-2014, 06:57 PM

Hey Guys,

I've been going though repeated SES light issues, so I thought I would post them here to vent and to see if you guys have any suggestions.

I bought a CPO'd 2011 335d last May with around 15k miles. In December, I started having issues with it not wanting to start. I took it in to the local BMW dealer right before Christmas to have the codes read, and they ended up replacing a faulty catalytic converter and doing an oil change. I mentioned to them that I was going to be driving to Chicago (about 800 miles) for Christmas, and didn't want to have any problems. They assured me it would be fine. The car had about 19k miles on it then.

I get to Chicago and the car starts throwing all sorts of lights, from the yellow limp mode to the SES. So I brought it into a Chicagoland dealer, and they ended up keeping it for a month. The SES light was due to low fuel pressure, and they ended up replacing the entire fuel system (high pressure pump, low pressure pump, inlet tube, regulator, sensor, etc). Ultimately they kept having problems with the SES light whenever the engine would hit 3k rpms. All told this service lasted from December 26th to January 21st.

Finally they claimed to have fixed it, and I had to ship it back to Denver on my own. The second time I drove it after it was returned by transport truck, the entire instrument cluster crashed, and the SES light returned. By crashed, I mean the display went dead, no turn signals, no lights, speedo and tach were frozen around 20mph, while the car still drove.

I again took it to the local dealer, and they ended up replacing the instrument cluster. This work was performed Feb 8th.

A couple weeks later, around Feb 21st the SES light returned. This time they replaced a NOX sensor, and DEF fluid valve.

Recently, the car started having intermittent hesitation issues while accelerating and died on my wife at a stop light and threw an SES light along with a brief period of limp mode. The car went back into the dealer on 3/31 and I got it back today. They replaced the fuel pressure regulator (again!) and test drove it 200 miles to see if it would fault. The reasoning being that I hadn't made it more than 200 miles between services.

Today they returned the car to me unwashed, and the fuel gauge was literally at 0. It was so low, that I was unable to make it home before hitting 6 miles to empty, and decided to walk the rest of the way home for fear of running the injectors dry.

At this point, I'm really frustrated and fed up. It's been to the dealer 5 times since late December. I've called BMWNA many times, and have recently asked for a buy back. No word on that yet. What do you guys think? Any way to get them to the real problem? All of these parts couldn't really have failed by 21k miles, right? Can a CPO qualify as a Lemon?

I can post the service records if you'd like the see them.

GreekboyD · 04-09-2014, 08:17 PM

Lemon for sure man. Any sensible dealer would work with you and try to get you into another car with a more than fair buy back price.

Yozh · 04-09-2014, 09:24 PM

That's terrible, sorry to hear about your ordeal. To me this again proves that dealers out there are clueless. I would be pushing through BMWNA hierarchy to get to someone who can resolve your issues. Some folks out there were successful in getting in touch with BMWNA Engineering (not sure the exact titleage). May be others will be able to guide you better. Best of luck.

You may wish to post the details of your issues, codes thrown, etc. Some others may have had previous experiences as well.

RallyeRalle · 04-09-2014, 10:10 PM

Sorry to hear about your nightmare... too bad you don't live close to Munich otherwise you could do what one of my uncles did about 20 years ago:

He had bought a really bad Mercedes which had all kinds of failures right from the beginning on... in today's measures certainly a lemon. Too bad for Mercedes that he was an aircraft engineer who had worked many years as lead engineer for MBB and Dornier. So he evaluated the build quality of the faulty engine and trim parts from a aircraft engineers perspective and marked all the car parts the he thought were constructed badly with a red round sticker dot.

He showed the car to all familiy members when we was ready with marking all the crappy parts... eventually, the car had red dots all over, really hillarious.

Next, he drove it to the front gate of the Mercedes main manufacturing plant at that time (Sindelfingen, Germany) and asked to speak to the management. He insisted that they take to car back and replace it with a new one.

And the best part is, they did replace it without much resistance... the story even made it into national newspapers.

I wish you all the best with your car... maybe it would help to drive it to your CPO dealer, have all the parts marked that have already been faulty and throw him the keys on the table and say that he should have a closer look at what gunk he sold to you. Clever vizualization can work wonders...

Puerto Rican 335d · 04-10-2014, 08:29 AM

Damn amigo a DAMN LEMON!!

joe_planet · 04-10-2014, 09:42 AM

Cant lemon. Not a new car

AzureHaze · 04-10-2014, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe_planet

Cant lemon. Not a new car

+1. A buy back is your only option in getting rid of the dud. I've never heard of a 335d with so many various problems!

Quasimodem · 04-10-2014, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bertsulli

Today they returned the car to me unwashed, and the fuel gauge was literally at 0. It was so low, that I was unable to make it home before hitting 6 miles to empty, and decided to walk the rest of the way home for fear of running the injectors dry.

I can post the service records if you'd like the see them.

Well, that situation sounds terrible, hope it works out. But, just a FYI -- you still have a gallon and a half of reserve fuel even at zero. If that happens again and it goes past zero, hit the trip odometer so you can tell how far you are driving because "miles to empty" stop counting and dont go into negative. I have taken my car around 35 highway miles past zero, but I dont recommend it. After which I went, picked up a diesel fuel can and put a few gallons of fuel in it before driving it off to the station.

mact3333 · 04-10-2014, 09:39 PM

You can absolutely lemon a car even if it's not new. Friend of mine lawyers up on 5 year old 997 c4s and Porsche cut him a 17k check and they didn't even officially lemon the car so it still has a clean carfax .

You gotta lawyer up and then dealer listens

But my friends suit was against Porsche and not dealer and there was no money out of pocket so no risk for him

04-09-2014, 06:57 PM	#1
bertsulli Registered 0 Rep 2 Posts Drives: 335d Join Date: Feb 2014 Location: Denver, CO iTrader: (0)	SES Light Saga Hey Guys, I've been going though repeated SES light issues, so I thought I would post them here to vent and to see if you guys have any suggestions. I bought a CPO'd 2011 335d last May with around 15k miles. In December, I started having issues with it not wanting to start. I took it in to the local BMW dealer right before Christmas to have the codes read, and they ended up replacing a faulty catalytic converter and doing an oil change. I mentioned to them that I was going to be driving to Chicago (about 800 miles) for Christmas, and didn't want to have any problems. They assured me it would be fine. The car had about 19k miles on it then. I get to Chicago and the car starts throwing all sorts of lights, from the yellow limp mode to the SES. So I brought it into a Chicagoland dealer, and they ended up keeping it for a month. The SES light was due to low fuel pressure, and they ended up replacing the entire fuel system (high pressure pump, low pressure pump, inlet tube, regulator, sensor, etc). Ultimately they kept having problems with the SES light whenever the engine would hit 3k rpms. All told this service lasted from December 26th to January 21st. Finally they claimed to have fixed it, and I had to ship it back to Denver on my own. The second time I drove it after it was returned by transport truck, the entire instrument cluster crashed, and the SES light returned. By crashed, I mean the display went dead, no turn signals, no lights, speedo and tach were frozen around 20mph, while the car still drove. I again took it to the local dealer, and they ended up replacing the instrument cluster. This work was performed Feb 8th. A couple weeks later, around Feb 21st the SES light returned. This time they replaced a NOX sensor, and DEF fluid valve. Recently, the car started having intermittent hesitation issues while accelerating and died on my wife at a stop light and threw an SES light along with a brief period of limp mode. The car went back into the dealer on 3/31 and I got it back today. They replaced the fuel pressure regulator (again!) and test drove it 200 miles to see if it would fault. The reasoning being that I hadn't made it more than 200 miles between services. Today they returned the car to me unwashed, and the fuel gauge was literally at 0. It was so low, that I was unable to make it home before hitting 6 miles to empty, and decided to walk the rest of the way home for fear of running the injectors dry. At this point, I'm really frustrated and fed up. It's been to the dealer 5 times since late December. I've called BMWNA many times, and have recently asked for a buy back. No word on that yet. What do you guys think? Any way to get them to the real problem? All of these parts couldn't really have failed by 21k miles, right? Can a CPO qualify as a Lemon? I can post the service records if you'd like the see them.
	Appreciate 0 Tweet Quote

04-09-2014, 08:17 PM	#2
GreekboyD Brigadier General 416 Rep 3,051 Posts Drives: 2009 BMW 335d Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Toronto, ON, Canada iTrader: (0) Garage List 2009 BMW 335d [8.00]	Lemon for sure man. Any sensible dealer would work with you and try to get you into another car with a more than fair buy back price.
	Appreciate 0 Quote

04-09-2014, 09:24 PM	#3
Yozh Colonel 881 Rep 2,611 Posts Drives: 2011 335d M-Sport Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: Wet Coast iTrader: (4)	That's terrible, sorry to hear about your ordeal. To me this again proves that dealers out there are clueless. I would be pushing through BMWNA hierarchy to get to someone who can resolve your issues. Some folks out there were successful in getting in touch with BMWNA Engineering (not sure the exact titleage). May be others will be able to guide you better. Best of luck. You may wish to post the details of your issues, codes thrown, etc. Some others may have had previous experiences as well.
	Appreciate 0 Quote

04-09-2014, 10:10 PM	#4
RallyeRalle Enlisted Member 1 Rep 30 Posts Drives: BMW 335d Join Date: Mar 2014 Location: USA iTrader: (0)	Sorry to hear about your nightmare... too bad you don't live close to Munich otherwise you could do what one of my uncles did about 20 years ago: He had bought a really bad Mercedes which had all kinds of failures right from the beginning on... in today's measures certainly a lemon. Too bad for Mercedes that he was an aircraft engineer who had worked many years as lead engineer for MBB and Dornier. So he evaluated the build quality of the faulty engine and trim parts from a aircraft engineers perspective and marked all the car parts the he thought were constructed badly with a red round sticker dot. He showed the car to all familiy members when we was ready with marking all the crappy parts... eventually, the car had red dots all over, really hillarious. Next, he drove it to the front gate of the Mercedes main manufacturing plant at that time (Sindelfingen, Germany) and asked to speak to the management. He insisted that they take to car back and replace it with a new one. And the best part is, they did replace it without much resistance... the story even made it into national newspapers. I wish you all the best with your car... maybe it would help to drive it to your CPO dealer, have all the parts marked that have already been faulty and throw him the keys on the table and say that he should have a closer look at what gunk he sold to you. Clever vizualization can work wonders... Last edited by RallyeRalle; 04-10-2014 at 01:02 AM..
	Appreciate 0 Quote

04-10-2014, 08:29 AM	#5
Puerto Rican 335d Brigadier General 236 Rep 3,488 Posts Drives: Montego Blue 335d Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Puerto Rico(Dominican Republic 03/2017) iTrader: (0)	Damn amigo a DAMN LEMON!! __________________ RENNtech Flash(Lenny Wu)/WAGNER IC Enkei Rajin 18"/Execuhitch Hitch/Koni FSD Soft Ride Bike Rack/Brava Synthetic Motor Oil(Made in Puerto Rico)/Meth(in the works)/CBU done w Andrew EGR Race Pipe (whoa! what an animal it is now)
	Appreciate 0 Quote

04-10-2014, 09:42 AM	#6
joe_planet Captain 45 Rep 800 Posts Drives: 2011 X5d Join Date: Apr 2013 Location: DFW iTrader: (1)	Cant lemon. Not a new car
	Appreciate 0 Quote

04-10-2014, 09:39 PM	#9
mact3333 Captain 126 Rep 876 Posts Drives: 16' YMB/Blk F82 Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Portland Area iTrader: (1)	You can absolutely lemon a car even if it's not new. Friend of mine lawyers up on 5 year old 997 c4s and Porsche cut him a 17k check and they didn't even officially lemon the car so it still has a clean carfax . You gotta lawyer up and then dealer listens But my friends suit was against Porsche and not dealer and there was no money out of pocket so no risk for him
	Appreciate 0 Quote