My reverse lights don't work on my 2000 323CI 5 speed BMW when in gear

check fuse #9 on your glove box

Ur BMW X5 series is having a transmission problems and it going to be worst if u don't take this car to a AMGO or the BMW dealership to take a look at it transnission gear box.Must have the car transmission fix.If u adnore this problems long enough the car transmission gears in the box will evenly buckle and grain to a ruin all of the gears parts teeths and than the car have to be in reverse and go to drive again every times tries to drive this car.Evenually all the gears teeths in the transmission box are all gone this car will go into iddle and will not go into drive gear at all.

Try shifting to 2nd gear and then into reverse to stop gear roll over.

Hi Mitch, If when engaging first gear you have a grinding and clunk try pumping the clutch pedal before engaging reverse. My reason for saying that is that if the pedal takes low to the floor you may have a defective hydrolic clutch line. If it doesn't work I think I would suspect a bent selector rod. Regards John

Assuming that you have checked the fuse for the fan, the most common problem is the resistor that controls the fan speed. That has been problematic, and BMW has tried several designs for this resistor. Current design part costs about $55 on line. I don't know where it is mounted on this model, but it will be under the dash near the center somewhere.

Is this a new truck to you? Some manual's have a manual reverse lock-out, meaning you have to engage the lock-out to shift into reverse. This is usually done by pulling up on a small lever just under the shift knob.

Otherwise, the lock-out is inside the transmission and if that breaks, the transmission has to be removed to fix it.

The other possibility is that you don't have a synchronized reverse gear. It will not automatically sync with the engine speed. Try lightly putting it in reverse while letting the clutch up to the engage point, you know, right where the clutch first starts to grab.

Read the trouble codes for your automatic transmission using a scan tool. I like the wireless ELM327 OBD2 adapter and OBD Fusion app.
The trouble codes will tell you why the transmissiion is putting the car in limp mode.

ive heard people say that on a auto transmission on a BMW that if it wont go into reverse there might be something wrong with the transmission... just a thought, i might be wrong

dear friend-the fact that your vehcl does not pick up speed tells me that it is slipping,there is a pressure lost in the gear box,you have to remove and rebuild as the clutches will be burnt.

If the car is grinding when going into reverse, you need to have the clutch bled or repaired.

If it goes into reverse with out grinding, I am sorry to tell you your problem is internal to the gearbox. Bad or damaged Syncro

Good luck