Unusual fault?

Had exactly the same symptoms with my previous car - a 97 523i Touring - in my case though it was after filling up with petrol - returned to car, drove fine but absolutely nothing from the instruments.

Never found the cause - it didn't recur - and I had that car fro around

4 years I think. Shortly after this though I did replace the final stage resistor as the fan wasn't behaving itself - whether these are in any way related I couldn't say.

No problems fix themselves - paraphrased from Click and Clack's book (which I do not have in front of me).

They we're talking about suspensions but I think the theory is sound: when a symptom of a problem disappears, the problem has gotten a little worse and there is some new symptom, which you may not be able to observe yet.

Sorry I'm not much help. The older BMWs had a battery on the service interval board that would die and screw up the tach but I thought they fixed that after the E28. Just a guess.

-- Aubrey

Laurence.

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Happened to me too ages ago the day before it was booked into the main dealer for a routine service. The car was picked up and returned with it working ok again and no charge made - so I've no idea what they did. Or even if the fault had cleared itself. Hasn't happened since.

As I've mentioned before, I don't know much about electronics, but could it be the sort of fault computers get, where all that's needed is a reboot? A case of the s/ware getting it's knickers in a twist.

I didn't mention it but I stopped on my way out yesterday. Switched off the engine. Restarted and played around with switches. Fault remained. It was the switching off. Locking and unlocking that seemed to do the trick. Mike.

There is a test mode for the instruments accessible via the trip counter reset - hold that down when switching on to enter the menu. So they are under the control of a microprocessor.

Remember the joke about the GM CEO that said that if Microsoft made a car that went wrong you would have to get out lock all the doors then get back in and start it again and it would be Ok.

Looks like we got MS-BMW cars here

Every so often (I think it's happened three or four times in the three years I've owned my car) I couldn't get the cruise control to work. The solution: turn the car completely off and then restart the car. Basically I'm rebooting the computer that controls the cruise control. Just shutting off the engine doesn't work, I have to turn the car completely off so the computer shuts down.

Yes - even though my E65 is only 9 months old sometime the bluetooth system won't connect to my phone.......... Oh dear! life is a bind.......