Last night, I returned from a week of travel. My car battery was empty: it had enough juice to run the interior lights and such, but not enough to crank over the motor. After trying, everything else in the car went dead and only gradually came back. Luckily, the car park had a jump start battery on a dolly, so we had the car up and running again in a jiffy. The empeg was noticably unhappy with the current it was receiving from the car, so I pulled it out. Whenever the engine went below 1000rpm or so, all the lights would dim. Wonderful. I paid for my parking, pulled out, and a traffic light went red. I put the clutch in, the engine spun down to idle, and promptly stalled. Clearly, the battery was not only dead, but wasn't recharging, either.

Great. At this point, I figured the car wasn't safe to even attempt driving home. I called BMW's "roadside assistance" and they promised to send a tow truck for me. Quickly enough, one showed up.



"You're here from BMW, right?" "Yup." He asks me to sign a form that says I agree to pay for it. "BMW's paying for this, right?" "Sure, no problem."

Away we go toward my dealer. We're about five miles down the freeway when my cel phone rings. It's BMW roadside assistance again. They say the tow truck is where I said I was, but I wasn't there. But I'm already in the tow truck! Maybe they dispatched two of them? Consternation ensued. Turns out, BMW's are only to be towed on flatbed trucks, never on hoist-two-wheels-and-drag-the-rest trucks. I have my driver pull over and unhook the car. Eventually the proper truck arrives and arranges for my car to get onto the flatbed.



The original truck driver thinks it's B.S. that he could have damaged my car, yet he refused to give me his insurance information or to admit that he wasn't, in fact, dispatched by BMW. "Then who sent you?" "Somebody called me." Maybe, maybe not, but he clearly misled me on whether BMW would pay or not.

The second crew of guys (business card tag line: "You flip 'em... We tow 'em...") ended up storing my car overnight as there was nowhere particularly secure to drop the car near the dealer. They dropped it off this morning and I explained to the service rep, over the phone, what happened. Do they have any loaner cars? No. I'll probably be carless for a week.

At this point, I have no clue what, if any damage, was caused to my car from the inappropriate towing. I also have no clue whether my electrical problem was strictly related to a dead battery, something in the car draining the battery, and/or some kind of alternator problem.

At least I had an intriguing adventure, plus I have numerous photos of the first truck, including its license plate and it's "TX DOT" (department of transportation) number, which should give me sufficient information to track down his insurance carrier, if need be.

Yeesh.

im not familiar with cars of that caliber, but im assuming its rear wheel drive
am i wrong, and its awd?
awd cars, as i understand it, should not ever be towed unless on a flat bed.

M coupe only avaliable with stick shift in Uk so probably okay there manuals no probs towing

Alternator died on my beemer and it took all the charge from the battery as something had gone to earth

Or your battery has got a dead cell and when the alternator dropped below charge level then the electrics crapped out

Yeah that does sound like a nice way to end a trip.

I can't really come up for an explanation of what would be wrong that would cause it to not start after a week and then still not work after being jump started. Shouldn't the alternator have enough power at idle to run the car without a battery? I guess I'm not a mechanic.

Matthew

Scary!!! Immediately made me think of that scene in "24" where Jack is on the phone to Terri and tells her that the man who she thinks is Kim's friend's father (and is driving the car) was found dead!

"Who was that?"

"Erm, wrong number!"

Gareth

Yup, it's rear-wheel drive and a manual transmission. I think the damage issue is that the T-bar of the towing mechanism is rubbing up against sensitive bits on the underside of the car, particularly the front suspension. I'll know more when I hear back from my dealership.

(And, yes, I had a certain apprehension about "24", although this particular truck driver didn't really seem to be much of a threat. When I said to pull over and unhook my car, he did it without giving me any trouble. He only started saying stuff that I didn't buy when it pertained to his potential liability for damaging my car.)

Sounds like a dead alternator. Shouldn't be too expensive.

A dead alternator doesn't really explain why the battery was dead after only a week of sitting there, but that's explainable in addition to the dead alternator.

My guess is that it was on it's way out before he parked it and the week of sitting (possibly with something drawing a slight current) pushed the battery over the edge.

Very possible now that you put it that way.

Shoulda not even dealt with the towing and push started it and not let it drop below idle at the lights. Im always sketchy about tow trucks.

yeah, i as well. but if the alternator is going bad, which it sounds like the problem is, keeping it revved up wont matter if the alternator is quickly degrading. now, if at higher rpms its still able to produce enough voltage to run his headlights, produce the sparks and everything else he needs done then yeah, drive home. sometimes, with a bad alternator, thats not possible. i spent the night in milwaukee in 2001 because of a bad alternator, and i knew it was going bad and was trying to get home, keeping the rpms up and such.

wow, the crackheads that walk around downtown milwaukee at 2 in the morning...

I had very much the same thing in Holland, returning from the Amersfoort meet, this year. The garage checked all the usual things, couldn't find the fault, checked with the manufacturer who put them in touch with a diagnostics expert. It turned out to ba a fault in the central locking/alarm.

The Dutch equivalent of the AA are really friendly guys!

Dutch equivalent of the AA are really friendly guys!

Hi. I'm Godfrey and I've had car trouble for ten years.

Hi, Godfrey!

I'm beginning to understand why he told Mrs.B to go and have a drink and sit in the sun whilst we sorted it out!

if the alternator is going bad, which it sounds like the problem is, keeping it revved up wont matter

I still haven't heard from the dealer, so I don't know yet whether I'm looking at a simple dead battery or something more complex. My dad's theory is that the battery may have gone dry, so it won't take a charge any more. Given my dealer's typical efficiency, they'll probably call me later today to say that they still haven't gotten started, but they still don't have a loaner car for me.

*sigh*

yeha, in my case my car was running on battery power alone towards the end. battery was sucked completely dry and alternator was shot

Yesterday, they called to say my car was ready. The original battery was dead and the alternator was fine. I went to pick up the car and they claimed to have found no damage from the towing. Nice. I paid for my oil change, done at the same time, and hopped into the car, started it, and saw the ABS idiot light on. You're not supposed to see that.

I marched back in and inquired as to how nobody might have noticed the idiot light and, perhaps, maybe there was some damage done after all by the towing. You'd think that, when they inspected the car for damage, that they'd inspect the freaking idiot lights, much less what the OBD computer might have to say. Yeesh. I'm now driving a loaner car while they sort it out. (And, even that was a challenge. My service advisor didn't have any loaners. I asked if any other advisors might have one. Sure 'nuff, we scared up a car for me. You'd think they would have a centralized pool of loaners rather than preallocating them to advisors, some of whom will need more than others.)

In other news, I found out that my warranty was somewhat non-standard. Apparently, my car was "bought" three months before I paid for it, yet I got it with all of ten miles on the odometer. I now understand this to be a standard dealer tactic for meeting factory sales quotas. The dealer "bought" it with their own money, but still hadn't sold it to anybody until I came along. When I got it, I effectively purchased a "dealer demo" with three months of the 3 year/36000 mile "complete coverage" burned, but with an extended bumper-to-bumper warranty going out to 4 years/50000 miles. None of this, not one word, was told to me when I bought the car, even though I think it's a reasonably good deal. It means I've now got until February '04 before I absolutely want a new car.

Did I mention that my next car will be something other than a BMW?

Or get one from another dealer. And then demand to see all the paperwork on the car before you pay for it.

What a rough deal.

Back when I was shopping for my car, model year 2000, I found several 1999's at a different local dealer. I made a low-ball offer on one and the dealer immediately whipped out a pad of paper, scribbed the price and said "sign here". That got me nervous, so I went out to check the car in more detail. That's when I noticed it already had 12K miles on it! We walked away from the dealer.

As far as I can tell, this level of "whoops, did we forget to mention that" service is endemic in BMW dealerships. No more for me.

re:ABS
if the ignition was left on for the first tow the car may have thought that the front wheels (or brakes) had 'locked up' causing an abs fault. this would not damage anything, just needs to be reset.............
BUT-
if the first tow job was a hack, the front abs speed sensors may have been yanked / killed by a chain or hook.

hope it all turns out ok for ya.

PS, I'm not sure I buy the 'just a bad battery' claim, sounds like worn brushes on the regulator.

Another day has past, and no call from the dealer. It was awfully convenient having a loaner 325 over the weekend with my sister in town, plus going to a Haloween party carrying a friend covered in glitter. There isn't too much glitter in the car after all that.

I've also taken this reprieve to load all my new tunes onto the empeg, which is now busily rebuilding its databases. Or something like that.