Your fleet running reports

[MikeHunt]

Not my car, but my friends 2022 M3. An over the air software update has failed and basically bricked the whole car leaving him stranded, not a happy chappy.

[Jobbo]

Not my car, but my friends 2022 M3. An over the air software update has failed and basically bricked the whole car leaving him stranded, not a happy chappy.

That's going to be much more of an issue when the car is out of warranty. Not good.

[Mito Man]

Just him or are there a sea of stranded M3s now?

[Matty]

Not my car, but my friends 2022 M3. An over the air software update has failed and basically bricked the whole car leaving him stranded, not a happy chappy.

I bet he turned the car off while it was rebooting. Classic mistake.
Has it tried starting it in safe mode?

[MikeHunt]

Has it tried starting it in safe mode?

He has been on holiday for 2 weeks, it's been sat in his garage. BMW assist have been looking at it for over an hour and advised not to risk driving it as idrive 8 controls everything, currently waiting for a low loader.

I think Jobbo has a point, I will deffo disable my updates after 3 years as I don't expect anything new to be added to idrive 7.

[Shlergen]

Quite a few threads on it & challenges getting the car into neutral before dragging onto loader and needing a BMW mechanic to come out..

[Beany]

Fuckin' 'ell, the only thing - and I do mean only thing - that should cause a firmware update to brick a car should be to disconnect the battery mid-update, and even then, there's no reason to not have a supercapacitor or similar stable power source to hold power so a simple rollback can be done - or have dual firmware. Error flag on firmware startup? Fallback to the original.

This is bread and butter stuff for a £60 computer motherboard, what excuse does BMW have for not doing it?

What's that? It'd cost an extra £1.75 per car? Oh, sorry, of course!

[Sundayjumper]

What Beanie said. BMW not allowing for people being stupid, clumsy, not following instructions, whatever, and rolling out a design that lets them easily brick a £50k, £100k, whatever car is inexcusable.

[Beany]

It's not even that. If the flash ROM it uses to update the firmware is br0ked for any reason - and I do mean any - then it should have a fallback to a base level ROM, on true non-volatile memory to allow the car to start and be safely drivable.

That it apparently does not should be full on class-action stuff and BMW should be utterly reamed for it.

[V8Granite]

Every IT bod I’ve ever had to work with has said all other IT bods are doing it wrong but every time I need something to just work from IT, it always has glitches or issues or I need to access something in a different way.

Zeros and ones my arse, there’s a fair few questions marks in it aswell by the sounds of things.

Dave!

[Mito Man]

So car wasn’t driven for a few weeks, was stupid enough to start an update by itself - wondering if it drained the sensitive lithium battery enough whereby it hit the minimum voltage, BMS shat itself and killed battery mid update. Hmm?

[Sundayjumper]

Every IT bod I’ve ever had to work with has said all other IT bods are doing it wrong...

Every tradesperson I’ve ever had to work with has said all other tradespersons are doing it wrong. Standard practice, eh @jamcg ??

[MikeHunt]

I'm losing faith in BMW. The first time I drove my car at night, I spotted that the puddle lights were broken. The only innocent explanation I can think of is that the garage have "borrowed" my perfectly good lights and forgotten to swap them back. It's a shocking way to treat a customer's car.

[Sundayjumper]

I washed the Compact cover today in Nikwax “Tech Wash” and “TX Direct”. It comes out with a slightly waxy / silicone-y feel to it. We’ll see how it works out.

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[Matty]

I'm losing faith in BMW. The first time I drove my car at night, I spotted that the puddle lights were broken. The only innocent explanation I can think of is that the garage have "borrowed" my perfectly good lights and forgotten to swap them back. It's a shocking way to treat a customer's car.

I think they've accidentally given you the Pride edition.

[Sundayjumper]

And as an indication of how shite the Galaxie cover is, here’s the *inside* of it. The side that’s meant to be clean & dry.

I think the breathable fabric is breathable in the same way that, say, a towel is breathable, i.e. water is able to freely move through it, and it’ll hold onto water very nicely given the opportunity. It has no intrinsic waterproofing ability. The waterproofness is achieved by some kind of coating and when that degrades you’re basically leaving a wet towel on your car all the time.

This one’s probably too big to put in the washing machine. I might have to hand wash it in the bath before re-proofing with one of the products you spray / brush on.

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[jamcg]

Every IT bod I’ve ever had to work with has said all other IT bods are doing it wrong...

Every tradesperson I’ve ever had to work with has said all other tradespersons are doing it wrong. Standard practice, eh @jamcg ??

Yup. Fucking cowboys

[Jobbo]

Booked my Audi in for service in a couple of weeks. It's slightly early (will be at around 15k miles and not due until 18k on long life) but since it's the first service I had been intending to do it from about 12k. I bought a service package for my previous Allroad which I traded in for the S6 and didn't end up using; it turns out that it must have been applied to the S6 so I have two inclusive services. Either that or they just gave me two services as a freebie (without telling me?). Anyway, can't complain. Though they were reluctant at first to book it in before the car was demanding a service; and that was before they discovered there was a service pack applicable.

ETA: just realised that you can add a service pack when you order the car new, just as an option on the spec list. I didn't spec the car myself so I didn't tick the boxes but maybe the dealership did when they ordered it. Further edit: maybe not, that's just the extended warranty.

[Sundayjumper]

Right, as per the "want" thread, I now have another car to blather about

A 2004 Smart ForTwo Passion. Pretty low miles for a near 20 year-old car @ 57,725 and a curious MOT history - it also had 57,725 miles when it was last MOT'd in Sep 2021, and also in Oct 2020. In Oct 2019 it had 57,719 and in Oct 2018 it had 57,710. So it's done fifteen miles in the last five years and *zero* in the last three

Reason being - it actually belonged to the dealer I bought it from. They took it in p/x in 2018, had it liveried-up for the business and parked it out on the main road as an advert. Where it just sat. After a while the council started getting a bit stroppy about it and they moved it to the back of their yard around a year ago when the MOT ran out. Where it just sat. Until now.

Everything I can see looks dirty and/or crusty. The engine starts & runs OK and although I've not driven it properly the gearbox behaved normally while I was loading & unloading which is a relief. The plan right now is to put it in for an MOT and anticipate a heroic list of faults which I can work my way through with the intention of getting a totally clean sheet at the next attempt.

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[duncs500]

Looks like fun! Are you now buying cars just for the fun of fixing them up? Or do you genuinely want this car to use?