530I will not start

[kevintb7]

my dad and brother decided to jack up my moms 02 530i last night and "fixed" her brush gaurd (black plastic piece under the bumper about 2in wide) he says he onl screwed plastic to plastic so im hoping whatever he did there is not related......
However they may have left a door open or something so this morning the car wouldnt start but some lights came on and my dad said the trunk opened
I got home from school and nothing worked no lights no trunk opening so battery was just about dead...
After searching for 15min under the hood we finnally found the positive lead fromt he battery and did a 3.5 hour fast charge...now all the lights go on and the trunk opens but the car still wont start not even turn over at all.....
the battery should have enough power to turn it over....so we were debating whether to do a jump start and try it or unplug the battery completely and reset the cars computer and hope then the ignition works....

Any idea on what could be wrong? i still havent ruled out that my dad grounded something out however i doubt that and im going to go look at that.....

also i have access to voltage testers etc from my school auto shop so i could ask my teacher to borrow something tommarow.....

[ginz111]

my dad and brother decided to jack up my moms 02 530i last night and "fixed" her brush gaurd (black plastic piece under the bumper about 2in wide) he says he onl screwed plastic to plastic so im hoping whatever he did there is not related......
However they may have left a door open or something so this morning the car wouldnt start but some lights came on and my dad said the trunk opened
I got home from school and nothing worked no lights no trunk opening so battery was just about dead...
After searching for 15min under the hood we finnally found the positive lead fromt he battery and did a 3.5 hour fast charge...now all the lights go on and the trunk opens but the car still wont start not even turn over at all.....
the battery should have enough power to turn it over....so we were debating whether to do a jump start and try it or unplug the battery completely and reset the cars computer and hope then the ignition works....

Any idea on what could be wrong? i still havent ruled out that my dad grounded something out however i doubt that and im going to go look at that.....

also i have access to voltage testers etc from my school auto shop so i could ask my teacher to borrow something tommarow.....

I'd jump it and reset the puter cant really hurt unless you dont know how to jump a car.

[kevintb7]

ive narrowed it down to the starter motor is fried or theres some sort of ignition lock

we just tried jumping it and nothing

we tried restarting the computer and the date and time were all lost but the car never did the 10miniute count down thing or asked for a code for the radio or anything so im not sure if it worked........

i couldnt find a way to access the starter motor or any fuses that pertain to it.....

hopefully someone knows something about the ignition lock feature on that car....because a the starter motor fring out randomly after the battery dies doesnt seem likely


EDIT: ignition lock feature i was talking about may be called Engine Immobilizer?

[ginz111]

Bad ignition switch maybe.
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=859195&highlight=ignition+switch

[kevintb7]

problem sorta fixed it self basically one of the keys randomly stopped working and the battery died at the same time....so i happend to do most of my troubleshooting with the broken key....which messed everything up....and the alternator was giving bad readings it was just a mess but the car seems to run fine now and were ordering a new key

[Tifun]

You shouldn't have to reorder a new key. You can get it reprogrammed. Be careful though, you can only get so many keys total before the module wont recognize any. I think it is 5, including the 3 you get from BMW.