[seezur]

Hey, not sure if this is the right spot on the forums, but I've got a couple of questions and a long post:

I took delivery of my M235i in 2016, and it's been a great car for the most part, but now I have a couple of issues and the dealer (where I've taken it twice, and most recently they kept it for four days) has told me that everything is normal.


First issue is brake service reminder. Whenever I start up my car I get a message on the dash stating that I need brake service in 3200 miles. This message has been appearing for the last 6000+ miles. When I check the vehicle info screen, it says that both rear and front brakes need to be changed in that interval.

I have had both the dealership and my independent mechanic verify that there is a lot of life left in the brake pads. The first time I brought it in they told me they recalibrated? the brakes and then reset the service indicator. A few days later, it popped back up. This most recent time they told me that it's a feature of the car and that despite software updates and resetting the indicator, nothing can be done. The service employee told me BMW has actually released literature on this, stating the car will warn you that you have 3200 miles even if you really have e.g. 9000 miles left. My dad has the same car but a year older and xdrive, and he does not have this issue with his older brake pads.


Second issue has been parking assist. I hit a raccoon back in December which annihilated much of my front bumper. I took the car to the repair shop owned by the company who owns the BMW dealership. They are a certified BMW repair shop but have cheaper labor rates and often work on BMW insurance claims.

Anyways, when I got the car back, I started to have issues with the automatic parking. It's not a feature I use often, but I found that when I would press the parking button it would now only find available spots 5-10% of the time, missing most if not all of the empty spots (when backing in), as opposed to before where it picked up 90% of the spots. Also the distance alert will sometimes go red even though there is absolutely nothing around me, and this happens on the sides of the car and the rear, not just the front.

I've had them work on it twice, and both times they told me there were no faults, that they've calibrated each sensor and that the car parked fine for them 9 out of 10 times. The second time I brought them a video of the car trying to back into a minivan over and over until being canceled and a video of it passing 7 open spots in a parking lot. Since they "fixed" it this time, it seems it works in my apartment parking lot, where the parking lines are yellow and where it wasn't working immediately after the car was fixed. It doesn't, however, work in a massive shopping center parking lot where the lines are white; no matter how many open spots I pass it will no longer pick up openings in that parking lot (which it used to regularly, and intermittently even a few months before the second "fix").

I drive under 20 mph, and within 4' of the cars, as per the manual but it just doesn't sense the cars, and sometimes it'll show the yellow distance warning on the left side of the car when I'm driving close to cars on the right side, trying to get the parking to work. It also doesn't park equally in between the cars anymore, sometimes parking way too close to the car next to it and leaving tons of room on the other side. I've searched around a lot but it's hard to find info on the parking system and I feel like they're just saying everything is good and waiting for my warranty to run out.


Last question is mainly cosmetic. I just noticed these rings of dust on the inside of the front headlight housing when the lights are on. Is this normal or is it a result of maybe dust/sediment getting in when they took everything apart after I hit the raccoon?


I'd like to get all this in before my warranty runs out, and maybe I'll have to go to a different dealership or contact BMW directly to get a fix, unless this is, in fact, all normal.

[kivyee]

If they took apart the headlight looks like they didn't clean it properly before putting it back together.
For the parking you might need to escalate to BMW NA. But because it was repaired by the repair facility you probably have to deal with them for a final resolution.

[amw896]

headlights are normal. The rest isn't.

[overcoil]

My iDrive Brake Service status also reads 3200-miles like described above. I asked dealer about this and they said it was working correctly.

[Luftwaffe1O1]

The brake thing is normal, it isnt an accurate measure, ive had mine show 3200 miles but have lots of life left.

The parking thing you would need to discuss with the bmw dealer its not normal.

Headlights they might have not cleaned but i notice another issue, your top led strip is faded in colour, it is blueish instead of white. Sit down infromt of the car and look at both headlights head on, the top strip should be close in colour to the angel eyes. They replaced my entire headlight for this heh.

[morphomeman]

The parking thing is consequent to a collision. Collisions are not normal, by definition, so all bets are off. Since the repair was done by a reputable shop, you need to just stay on their case and not give up until it is fixed.

[Maynard]

Might be that there is overspray or some other film on the sensors, so they don't read correctly? I don't have (or understand) all the self-parking features, but some of your complaints sound similar to what I've heard about people painting or wrapping over sensors. Definitely don't just settle for them telling you 'it's supposed to be like this' when it wasn't that way originally.

And if you are upstate, you might get some of the locals to smudge it to help drive away the spirit of the angry raccoon .

[mcompact]

The 3200 mile brake message is completely normal.