jochen

All the BMW CD changers are connected to permanent power

Come to my house. I'll send you a PM The nav system in your car WILL work, if you come to my house I can proove it to you, and make sure you have the very latest nav system software. Jochen

To turn it on: Go to BMW dealer, connect DIS Run the retro-fit alarm coding for your car Enable light flash for lock / unlock as desired. May or may not work - didn't flash lights on my car, maybe because it wants the extra devices connected as welll (tile sensor, movement sensor) Jochen

6? Your motor must be missing two cylinders! Mine has the full complement of 8 :-)

Hi Jazzbass, I am trying to nut out why my car doesn't flash the indicators when I lock it. I may be forced to have the tilt sensor and the ultrasonic sensor - I thought i might be able to ignore them I'll try and find the right bits on ebay etc and try it out. Jochen

Hmmm... Check the following in this order: Carefully inspect the cable to the bulb. I think these lights are high-voltage discharge lights (HID), so you want to check for any breaks, cuts, or anything the looks bad on the high-voltage cable. That's the one with the thick insulation. If the high-voltage is arcing across to soemthing them that'll cause trouble. If the cable is clean, undamaged, and looks to be in good condition then try swapping the control units left and right (label them first) to see if you have a bad control unit or bad HID bulb. I suspectt he control unit, as I think the HID would be more reliable. If you have aftermarket units, go to the suplier for a spare bulb / control unit If you have genuine BMW units, then you know where to get spares ... :-) Good luck! Jochen (I also replaced my headlights yesterday, but I stuck with good old halogen bulbs, standard BMW)

Well for those that have been here over the last few weeks might have seen me telling my woeful story of a misfire (at idle only) on my E39 540i which was becoming hard to track down. Coils, they said at BM Workshop. "We replace lots of them, they always fail" The E39 has 8 x coils, one per plug, and they are mounted right on top of the plug. They are under high-voltage stress, and also heat stress - the engine runs at 108 degrees. A tough environment for anything electric or electronic. But which coil was failling? "Wait till it throws a fault code" they said. So I waited, and waited, and went in for a fault code readout every couple of weeks. Well, the misfire slowly got worse, until it became a right pain in the idle. Embarrassing. How could I let my car stay in this state? But narry a fault code was ever logged - the misfire was too quick and too intermittent. The man from BM kindly said 'Let's do a smooth-running test' So we hooked up the DIS, and ran the test, which monitors the adaptation values (fuel-air mix etc) of each and every cylinder in real time. Cylinders 6, 3 and 7 were slightly higher than the others, but still within spec. We cleared the adaptation values, forcing the DME to re-learn the motor characteristics. Then - blip - a misfire, and at the same time the value for cylinder #6 sprang up high. Ah hah! we both said. Aloud. Quick as a German fox, out came the coil from #6, and we swapped it with #1 (after having numbered all coils of course) Drive it for a day then come back, said the man from BM Workshop I did, the misfires kept happening, so back onto another smooth-running test first thing in the morning. This time, within a minute, we caught another misfire, and it was logged on #1 "Told ya - a coil" he said. And he was right A new coil fitted to #1, and now my V8 runs very smoothly at idle, and hasn't misfired once since last Friday I'm a very happy puppy again :-). Jochen

Be very cautious - the light bulbs in a late model BMW (E34/E36 and newer) are driven by the Light Control Module (LCM) which switches each and every bulb on using electronics and transistors. So trippling the load by changing from 55W to 150W will very likely cause the LCM to burn out and fail I wouldn't do it if I were you - stick to the original bulb wattages for safety. Jochen

Great - write that code down for next time!

"uncoded head unit" Only BMWs vehicles from 2001 and newer have coded head units (the so-called 'new generation' radios) What car are you driving? If you mean the security code, and you've lost it, I might be able to work out the code for you As for your problem - check all fuses, check your cable integrity, check the unloader relays, make sure your new stereo is not overloading the power lines and blowing a fuse when you wind the volume up loud (!!) and it helps to advise what year/model BMW you have....Jochen

Hi Ems (?), What year is your car? Is it NZ-New or ex-Japan or ex-Singapore? Do your indicators flash when you lock/unlock the car? Have you every tested the alarm to see how it goes off? Does it sound the horn as well as siren? Ta, Jochen

I have some questions as to how it works...

Whos talking about NEED? Do I need rain-sensitive and speed-sensitive wipers? Do I need ABS? Do I need ASC? Do I need Steptronic? The answer to all is no, but they're really great if you've got them :-) Same with nav - it's not about needs, it's about wants.... Hi ollie: BMW never made a nav option for the E30 - it simply didn't exist in those days.

Damn, am I _really_ the only guy with the nav system...???

Yes, he can do TV in the rear - that was a standard option on the 7 series I have the full wiring diagrams showing all connections Send him my contact details - happy to talk to him

Not sure if your motor has an idle control valve (ICV), but if it does, clean it! Bet you its gummed up and sticky. Carb cleaner, de-greaser, petrol etc will clean the guts of it. No scratching though! keep those surfaces nice and smooth...

Would like to share nav experiences with fellow user Wondering if anyone has done the hack of adding the NZ Speed Cameras into the nav system....

1997 E39 540i I've finally figured out what the 540 means. It's cents per km :-)

Jaycar sell AA sized NICADs or NIMH batteries with the right solder tags on them to solder direct to the board Easy repair

If your engine is at normal operating temperature but still running rich, and if you have an electronic controled motor (I'm not familiar with the M20) then check your motor temp sensor I had a VW Golf where the wire to the temp sensor for the motor electronics broke. This is separate to the temp gauge sensor. So temp gauge still read OK but motor ran rich. The motor electronics read this as a very cold engine and increased the mixture to the point that the plugs foulled and black smoke came out the exhaust. So worth a check Jochen

>> As for the speed control, i never had this. All BMW radios for the last 15 years have had this function. You can adjust the setting via the radio's service mode. You just didn't know it was there :-)

The reflectors in the tail light clusters are based around the light source being the filament of the bulb. The light source is at the focal point of the reflector. If you fit an LED replacement bulb, you'll find the light source is nowhere near the focal point of the reflector And the light will no longer be evenly distributed, and will end up being dimmer Don't do it, you'll be disappointed

>> a black wire that it taped to the main big black one. But it does run all the way back to the box in the c piller. This is the diversity antenna control wire. It's a coax cable with a coax connector on it. Your BMW has 3 x FM antennas and 1 x AM antenna on the rear windscreen. Your original factory radio could tell the antenna amplifier (in the C pillar) which FM antenna to use. ie: if reception dropped down on one antenna, the radio would tell the antenna amplifier to try the other antennas in turn until it found the one with the strongest signal. This gave the FM radio really good reception, a huge boost over a standard radio. Seeing as you have changed your original radio to an aftermarket one, you will now loose this functionality, and your FM reception won't be as good. You'll also loose the speed-dependent volume control, where the original BMW radio turns up the volume to compensate for increased raod noise at speed. You'll also loose the auto-dimming display, the genuine BMW look and feel, and all other features in the original, high quality, >$1,000 genuine BMW radio. Jochen

>> 95 Black e36 M3 ... Singapore import with 65000kms Be prepared for all the rubbers, plastics and glues to fall apart on you. Singapore = >40 degree heat & close to 100% humidity for >10 years = lots of deterioration in rubber, plastic, cloth, and glue I've heard stories of headlinings falling down, rubber seals giving up the ghost, plastics bits breaking, etc etc etc

>> is this a business unit? Post a pic or email me one I can identify the radio from the pic