4X4 light came on suddenly after sitting in the garage for a few hours. Brought car to BMW dealer straight away. Also, warning included stability control. Mechanics couldn’t find the issue and contacted BMW technology dept. apparently the transfer case needs replacement. This doesn’t sound like this should be happening in a relatively new car. It now has 13,000 miles or so. Will it be safe for highway use? What is this case responsible for? Many thanks
Since this is a new vehicle on its original tires and the dealersip is taking care of the problem under warranty, and they’re not trying to BS you out of it and blow you off, your only question should be “what kind of loaner will they give me?”.
Fear not. It’'ll be fine for highway use. A tip of the hat to them for willingly replacing the transfer case.
You SUV normally runs in 2WD mode. The transfer case provides power to the other 2 wheels allowing you to switch to 4WD. You should be able to run in 2WD mode without problems. But get it fixed ASAP. You should always get warranty work done quickly. BTW, I think that you deserve an X5 loaner while they fix it. If they don’t have the parts in stock, you may have to drive your X5 until the parts come in.
This has the full time 4wd, so don’t drive it until it’s fixed. But once it’s fixed it should be fine.
It would be great if this didn’t happen in a relatively new car, but BMW uses lots of complex systems and they’re only middle-of-the-pack in reliability, so honestly it’s not too surprising for something like this to break. Once it’s fixed (if it was diagnosed correctly), the car should be fine.
As an example of their complexity, did you know that the button that opens your glove compartment is electronic and not mechanical, so if something goes wrong there (such as a blown fuse), your glove compartment won’t open?