[rjabend]

Originally Posted by Novvaa

Not asking for any advice or anything here. Just figured I’d share the story so that future searchers can see how it all turned out.

So we custom ordered this vehicle and picked it up earlier this month. 2024 X7 40i in Carbon Black. Fairly loaded. It’s got 1100 miles on it so far. Wife drove it to pick up lunch earlier this week and that’s where our story takes place.

Chick Fil A almost always gives you a drink carrier if you have more than one drink in your order, at least where we live. It’s king of annoying because there’s two perfectly accessible cup holders so I really only need a carrier for 3 or more drink. Anyway, they give my wife the two drink in a holder, one tea and one milk shake. My wife is always worried about going out of her way for other people even when it doesn’t make sense so instead of immediately putting the drinks in the cup holder, she set them on the arm rest and pulled forward while holding the carrier in order to keep the line moving. Well then someone cut her off as they pulled in to the parking lot and she was forced to hit the breakes. She loses her grip and the tea and milkshake tumble forward on to the controls. She tried to wipe up as much as possible but there’s only so much you can do in that situation.

She drove it home and I went out with the vacuum and got as much out as possible. During this process, a bunch of error messages pop up, including a drivetrain malfunction, bricking the car. The error messages did go away after a couple of hours but we wanted to have it looked at anyway. Roadside sent a tow truck to pick it up and took it to our preferred dealership. The dealership sent us their review today and said that while it is currently functional, they do recommend that we replace the module, as the buttons are now all sticky and some remain depressed even after they are no longer being pressed. We would have asked them to replace the module even if they hadn’t made this recommendation, just to avoid issues down the road.

Our service advisor did recommend that we file a claim with our insurance to see if they’ll cover it. We are waiting to hear back on that. They did give us an estimate to swap in a new control module, including the drive controller and the ride height controller. Total cost is about $2500 which isn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be.

My wife is a car enthusiast herself so this really isn’t a case of negligence or anything like that. It was just an unfortunate series of events. She’s obviously distraught but shit happens so I’m not worried about it. Cars are meant to be driven and we aren’t going to baby ours.

I’ll update this post when we find out if insurance will cover the damage.

That kind of spill can cause latent defects in the electronics such as conductive whisker growth. I am not completely familiar with the electronics under the spill, but I recommend being very careful perhaps including not driving the vehicle.