I consciously took my 500 diesel to running low on fuel, and when it stuttered the engine light came on. I stopped, turned off and put a can's worth in. After only a few seconds cranking it fired up again and is as perfect as before. But the engine idiot light stays on, and when you do fire up the multifunction display says "Check engine".

How do I reset it?

Many thanks,

Dave

By visiting your dealer and getting the car hooked up to the diag machine.
If there is nothing wrong the error codes need to be reset on the ecu.

Thanks, that's what I feared.

It's at times like this I long for the KISS philosophy of the past and wonder about the future, with other nagging innocuous messages on displays that can only be reset by booking a dealer visit and coughing up £25-£50 quid for the privilege. "It's these complex computers, you see, Sir ...."

Having had a Mercedes for the last 11 years and watched their car prices go down through competitive pressures but dealer servicing prices balloon, now BMW are fiddling with the car diagnostics so that garages independent of the approved marque cannot reset servicing nags, where will it end?

Dave

Well, seeing as this is a brand-new 500, you should get this done under warranty at no cost. Later on down the line, I would be tempted to leave the ruddy thing until the next service.

John

I'm not having a go but- "under warranty?"... not if the customer themselves caused the fault. If they purposely ran low on oil to see what happened, would you expect the Dealer to replace the engine for free?

If you have a friendly word with the Salesman who sold you the car or someone in the Service Dept. along the lines of "I've just bought the car and accidently ran low on fuel and the EFI light has come on since, is there a chance a Tech wouldn't mind quickly resetting it?", I'm almost sure you won't be charged as it'll be a goodwill gesture.

Slipping the Tech a few quid or a beer would also have a similar result in your favour.

I doubt very much the dealer would charge you for turning the light off, i know the dealer i work at would not charge as it takes only 2 mins to sort. be semi honest with them and say it's only happened since i ran out of fuel.

But if i remember rightly after a certain number of engine startups the EML light should turn itself off because it does a self test everytime the engines run and after it sees that there is no problem after said amount of startups it should turn out the light but retain the code in the memory. thats if i remember right that is...

If by chance your near me, ill turn the light out for you.

The bad news, Omad, is that spookily I actually live in Basingstoke, too

The good news is that, as you are right, this evening the light went out

I looked and saw it was just on an hour's driving since it happened, and coincidentally 24 hours elapsed since it happened. I didn't consider the number of restarts. Anyhow, if my memory serves me right it was on the 4th or maybe 5th restarts the light actually went out with the others on fire-up.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts.

Dave

DABurleigh said:

Having had a Mercedes for the last 11 years and watched their car prices go down through competitive pressures but dealer servicing prices balloon, now BMW are fiddling with the car diagnostics so that garages independent of the approved marque cannot reset servicing nags, where will it end?

Dave

Click to expand...

modern mercs have no sump plugs so only they can change oil

D4nny8oy said:

I'm not having a go but- "under warranty?"... not if the customer themselves caused the fault. If they purposely ran low on oil to see what happened, would you expect the Dealer to replace the engine for free?

If you have a friendly word with the Salesman who sold you the car or someone in the Service Dept. along the lines of "I've just bought the car and accidently ran low on fuel and the EFI light has come on since, is there a chance a Tech wouldn't mind quickly resetting it?", I'm almost sure you won't be charged as it'll be a goodwill gesture.

Slipping the Tech a few quid or a beer would also have a similar result in your favour.

Click to expand...

Quite right, the warranty covers 'manufacturing failure', nothing else.

Cheers

GC

Well, I beg to disagree. You should be able to accidentally run out of fuel with a car - any car - without that causing you a long-term problem or it involving you in additional expense. Especially as there is no warning in the car handbook saying that you should not run the diesel model out of fuel. Running out of fuel is something that is a perfectly reasonable occurence, not misuse or abuse of the vehicle.

John

Your best off never letting the car run out of fuel...

good thing is its a new car there is little dirt in the tank on a slightly older car any contamination from the fuel tanks under filling stations can be drawn through and block the Fuel pump, fuel filter or the injectors

I always understood you should never let a diesel run out of fuel, the fuel pump gets its lube from the diesel for a start... so running out wont do it any favours.

Disconnecting the battery and leaving the car for 15 minutes should do the trick. My wifes Subaru had a dodgey sensor and the garage replaced the sensor but never reset the ECU so it kept the fault and the engine check light stayed on. Disconnected the battery and reconnected it 15 minutes later and all was good.

John R Smith said:

Well, I beg to disagree. You should be able to accidentally run out of fuel with a car - any car - without that causing you a long-term problem or it involving you in additional expense. Especially as there is no warning in the car handbook saying that you should not run the diesel model out of fuel. Running out of fuel is something that is a perfectly reasonable occurence, not misuse or abuse of the vehicle.

John

Click to expand...

Go under a certain level (2.5 litres from memory) in a transit & it wont start!

Remember the diesel lubricates the HP pump so run out of fuel & you f&ck the pump.

John R Smith said:

Well, I beg to disagree. You should be able to accidentally run out of fuel with a car - any car - without that causing you a long-term problem or it involving you in additional expense. Especially as there is no warning in the car handbook saying that you should not run the diesel model out of fuel. Running out of fuel is something that is a perfectly reasonable occurence, not misuse or abuse of the vehicle.

John

Click to expand...

There is also no warning in the handbook not to use your car as a piggery if you want it to be clean. In this day and age people should take the initiative and understand that running out of fuel in a diesel engined car isn't the best idea. I doubt it will do much damage this once but if it happened often enough I'm sure it could cause problems.

:yeahthat:

having seen the amount of time it took one of our mechanics at work to get a big old Toyota Diesel forklift running right after one of the drivers let it run out of fuel i

f the big old industrial forklift engines dont like it the Modern Multipoint will hate it with a passion

new injectors, fuel pump, filter and an age cleaning all the pipe work was what he had to do IIRC

Andy Monty said:

:yeahthat:

having seen the amount of time it took one of our mechanics at work to get a big old Toyota Diesel forklift running right after one of the drivers let it run out of fuel i

f the big old industrial forklift engines dont like it the Modern Multipoint will hate it with a passion

new injectors, fuel pump, filter and an age cleaning all the pipe work was what he had to do IIRC

Click to expand...

From what I've heard the more modern cars are actually more tolerant. Could be completely wrong of course

Because the modern common rail diesels work in an entirely different way, they are more tolerant of running out than older distributor pump indirect injection units.

Cheers

GC

Whoo, hold on. With my boat engine, or an old Fordson Major tractor I used to look after, or various old Gardner engined trucks I used to service, if you ran the fuel tank dry you had to prime the system. Thats why you had priming points, glass-bowled filters, and a set of instructions in the manual on how to do this. So you didn't run them out of fuel in the tank - that is, get air in the fuel line. It didn't do any harm to anything if you did, it was just a bit of a pain to prime them. When you service the fuel system (change filters etc) you have to prime, naturally. On the other hand, every time you stop the engine, you do actually run it out of fuel - turn off the supply to the pump and injectors - it's the only way to stop a diesel. And it does no harm, of course. In all my time with diesel engines, I have never encountered any damage to an engine caused by fuel failure. But perhaps these modern jobs are different.

John

But surely in a system where the fuel is the lubricant stopping the supply at the injector to stop the engine is massively different to stopping it even entering the fuel pump?