[JaredG_F30]

Hi all,

I just wanted to share and issue that I finally resolved in case some of you experience the same things. About 2 months ago I noticed slow starts in the morning. I expected a dying battery as it was over 6 yrs old. After replacing my battery and registering it, I would have intermittent iDrive warnings of "Charging Malfunction" and "Low Battery: Charge the battery or drive for an extended period of time" errors. I thought that maybe my alternator was going out. Then the other day I went to start my car. It wouldn't turn over even with a jumper pack. Now I'm starting to think my starter is going out however I'd had this issue before on my E36 M3 and it was a bad ground cable connection. So I started inspecting all of my cables and found a loose connection at the hex nut (Item 8 in the diagram). I tightened this up and now no more starting issues and no Charging Malfunction error. You can see from the diagram that the positive cable from the alternator goes to the starter then to the connection point at items 4 & 8. Item 2 is the ground cable for jump-starting the car. So it makes sense with a loose connection at 8 that the alternator wasn't charging the battery, the starter worker intermittently and jump-starting wouldn't work either.

tldr: If you are having Charging Malfunction errors, starting issues and flat battery check your cable connections.

Cheers!

[exE36M3]

Any idea how that bolt got loosened up?
Service guy remove the cable to do some work and never tightened it down?

[JaredG_F30]

I have no clue honestly

[Fastcarpoorman]

I am having the same issue and battery drains fast, the car only ran for 5 minutes and drained the battery, how do I find this bolt with the engine in the way