Quote Originally Posted by genius328i View Post
any updates
long story short, check another key, dont have another? buy a valet for <$65 if your symptoms are like mine below..
hello, this is my very first post on here, but after reading through all of the no crank no start forums, and watching videos related to this on my e46, I found there were a number of things that could be wrong. Let me start by telling you what happened to me. I came out to car and got, no crank, no start, not even starter click. hmmm dead battery? no, all lights came on, checked battery voltage on hidden obc menu, it read 12.4. so I roll started my car with no problems(thank god for standard). So i assumed my started took a shit since it had 220k on it. I work at a shop so i went ahead and replaced it next day, only took a hr or so doing it from the bottom, only removed reinforcement plate and charcoal cannister. Went to start it and same result... nothing.. so i went and checked every little fuse in the fusebox and under hood.. all good, so i jumped the starter with a long metal driver and sure enough it spins. So lets say i changed that as preventative maintenance. lol now what? I was on these forums for days and everyone saying key or ews is bad, well at that point i remembered I dropped my keys the same day the car wouldnt start. so I read on the forums about testing the key as this is my only one.. turns out everyone was saying that if the cluster makes the beep sound the key is good and ews is bad. NO, its only if the key beeps with door open in position one that key is good. Even a bad key beeps when you initially put it in the ignition, so i was mislead a little from the beeping meaning key was good, went to dealer got a new valet key for $63 hoping it worked. Sure enough next day the car started with the new key! Hooray! so why did my car roll start if the ews shuts off the spark, fuel pump, and injectors? ONLY because i have a tune for my catless headers, sec air delete, launch control, etc... bc when you get a tuned dme they remove ews from dme memory in a sense, not completely where you can just remove it but just so it doesnt have to match vins. so long story short check another key if you get power but no crank, no start, if you dont have a manual and a tuned dme you definitely will be shit out of luck. I got lucky and was able to bump start for a few days while trying to figure out my no crank, no start. Also since i mentioned i work in a shop, i had scanned the ews and found no faults but under ews diagnostic requests that bad key was saying invalid, this is also where i checked functionality of my clutch safety switch, but even with "invalid key" people were telling me my ews was bad when sure enough it was the KEY all along.