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I've been having starting issues in the morning. Almost every day (Sometimes it's every other day) when I go to start the car, I press the start/stop button and all the lights come on but no crank. I have to press the button 10-20 times to get it to start and sometimes have to let the car site with ignition off for 5 minutes.
To quickly go over the past 4 months.
January - Car died, battery was shot so I installed a new battery. Registered with BMW Carly. Battery was replaced with an O'Reillys AGM battery with the same exact specs as an OEM one.
March - Car died while on freeway, this happened twice. Alternator was tested and came back bad. Installed new OEM alternator. Right before the alternator went out I started noticing the starting issue. Starter issue has been going on since February. It didn't happen often at first but it's to the point now where it hasn't gotten worse but hasn't gotten better.
April - Finally took the car to a good indy shop locally, they ran a few tests and saw the battery was never registered properly. Battery registration shows 0 km (I'm at 97,000 miles). They told me to try to get a new battery since there is a possibility of harming the car if registering the battery again with whatever Carly did. I got a new battery and they registered the new battery with Autologic. They mentioned an unsuccessful battery registration could cause this issue but they more wanted to rule this out as a possible variable.
Since the new battery was installed, I still get the starting issue. It only takes me a few times pressing the start/stop button but it still persists. I went back to the INDY shop and they scanned the car and the car came back with:
A0C1 - Present - CAS: Output, Terminal 50
They said that there is a problem with the CAS communicating the to the DME and that the code has popped up 9 times since the new battery was registered. The battery was registered last week and I brought them the car today to scan. It is an intermittent error so it's a bit difficult for them to diagnose since the problem only happens on cold starts. Once I get the car started, I can leave it sitting for 4-6 hours and start it up no problem, it's only on cold starts when it acts up. They want me to drop the car off on Monday and leave it there overnight so they can replicate the problem and start testing voltage to see where exactly the problem lies. The shop owner said he would bet money it's not the Starter which I'm glad about since the labor involved in changing the starter is insane. The shop mentioned that they believe my CAS is bad and that possibly I'd need to replace it which isn't bad since I can program the CAS myself and the part itself is only 350 but I'd rather not go to that extent since there is a possibility that this could be a starter issue.
I've already tried disconnecting the IBS cable and it still persists so it is not an IBS issue. When I looked up A0C1 on the forums, most people that had this error had to replace their starter. The only thing is, the people that replaced their starter were throwing a lot more CAS codes than just A0C1. I also can't believe that my Battery, Alternator and Starter would all go out within 4 months of each other. The only thing I haven't checked is the engine ground cable, I'll have that checked in the next couple days. Does anyone have any ideas on what it could be or some things to test before taking it back to the shop on Monday?
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