X5M E70 Steering Wheel Buttons Not Working

[SeanK36]

Hi so I bought my X5M about a year ago now with 116k miles, It has almost the whole engine rebuilt including, timing chain, valve stem seals, rod bearings, camshafts, valve cover gaskets, spark plugs, injectors, coils, and a bunch more. I got my work done by a shop I trust, but when I received the car back my steering wheel horn, turn signals, Brights, cruise control and steering wheel buttons including M mode would not work. My mechanic told me to get a new clock spring so I bought it OEM from BMW, and once he put it in the turn signals, brights, windshield wipers, and steering wheel buttons started working, and the car was out of limp mode. Then I turned the car off and on, and the orange lights that light up the buttons, went away, and the car entered limp mode again. So the steering wheel buttons would still not work. And the car is in limp mode but there are no engine codes or anything, so I ordered a new steering wheel with new buttons, and the whole steering column. It still didn’t make the buttons on the steering wheel work. But my turn signals, brights, adjuster, wipers, and cruise control are working. I’m assuming the car won’t be in full power/Limp since there is no access to M Mode. The next day I started getting a battery warning that my battery was drained, and when I started it up it sounded terrible until I let it charge up. Then something came to mind, and I remembered the first time I got it diagnosed by some other mechanic, he said my alternator was bad, which was only about 2 months ago. So I also bought a used alternator off an X6M recently.Any thoughts on what this could be, should I install the alternator then try? Please let me know if this has happened to anyone else it’s the only thing holding my car back at this moment. Thanks.

[argento]

Sorry to hear you're having this odd set of issues, crazy. It almost sounds like one of those weird grounding issues...start with the alternator and check the cables are good and not corroded. But then check all the other grounding locations. There's one on the driver side back near the firewall way down near the bottom of the engine...I think another near the transmission...and then there's the one at the exhaust (but doubt it's the issue b/c many swap in aftermarket exhausts with no issues)...obviously the battery, there are likely others, I just remember these. Maybe someone has a link to a previous thread...

Thread on ground locations:
https://www.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh...php?p=25012554

Here are parts only:
https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=12_1441