*UPDATE* Issue resolved and fixed. I didn't swap to a manual, I pushed through the SMG complexity and am now driving a problem free car, having put more $ into it than I needed to...but that's BMW ownership I guess.
Full timeline and list of parts and actions taken below.
The car is 2004 M3 (PY) with 112k miles, very well maintained. I've never touched the SMG or trans systems on this car outside of changing the trans oil and fresh CHF-11S when I swapped to a Karbonius CSL intake. I also had HTE flash the CSL SMG software for the faster shifting and rev matching.
Original issue: I was driving in heavy traffic and the car went into N, cog light came on and would not shift back to first. I was in the left lane on Rt. 95 (highway) and was very lucky that an RS6 driver that I was next to quickly pulled over to the left shoulder in front of me and helped me push the car to the shoulder behind him. If it weren't for him, I would have blocked traffic for miles (my 5yo daughter was in the car so just me getting out was a no-go).
First inspection was to scan the codes with INPA which I had previously installed on an old laptop. I believe there were two codes; pump switching on and low/no pressure in the system. After some searching, that pointed me to the electric motor on the SMG pump unit to be the issue. I removed the intake and then the pump unit. Unfortunately, one of the hydraulic lines would not come loose as it looked like someone was in there previous to my ownership and rounded over the line nut on the 4th line (closest to the fill port) so I had to cut the line and got a replacement on ebay. All I did was remove the motor and noticed that it had burned up (some melting on the inside center told me the motor was toast). I ordered a replacement from MLREng (all my SMG parts came from them) and then reinstalled the SMG pump unit, having not done any other work to it (first mistake).
While the motors can fail, this is often indicative of another issue and just replacing the motor may lead to a failure down the road unless the root cause is found and solve, which I believe I did later on in this story.
After reinstalled the pump unit, I fired up INPA again and started to bleed the actuator, then the clutch slave using the special functions in the INPA version from Mike's BMW Tools. I then made the mistake of running the full adaptations (second mistake). Running the adaptations exposes and flaw in the system that isn't factory perfect. Once I ran this, and then subsequently failed, that's the the real problems arose.
Before the next step. I decided to drive the car to see if it was even possible...and it was. The car drive fine but was a little slow to change gear but the clutch engaged fine. I thought that since this was happening, there had some be something preventing the car from knowing the clutch parameters but I didn't know what. I can't drive a car, especially a weekend cruiser/track toy with a light on the dash. Also you can't pass inspection in MA with a light on, so now I need to figure out why the light was on and how to clear it. The traditional way of clearing codes won't work for this error as the trans need to adapt for the code to clear. No adaption means when you clear it, it comes right back on.
I took the SMG pump unit back out and decided to replace the seals using the thread on this forum as a guide. After buying and installing the seals and a temp sensor, pump went back in, bleed and bleed (important note that I was not just bleeding once with INPA, I would bleed both procedures several times to make sure I got all the air out of the lines). I also tested all 4 solenoids with a 12v source and all were clicking like they should. Reinstalled and then reran the adaptations with another failed result.
Next I thought the issue would be with the clutch since the adaptation would fail with 'could not establish overlap of clutch valve' error note in INPA through a google translation. I ended up removing the trans completely and doing a full inspection. While my clutch slave was old, it was still working fine or so I though but I decided to replace it with a used one. I also thought I should replace the clutch and flywheel since the trans was out anyway. I ended up replacing the clutch/flywheel, rear main seal, trans input seal, trans output seal and the gear shaft selector seal while I was in there. Also the clutch fork, steel pivot pin and the fork collar too. I also removed the gear selector completely and lubricated the selector shaft knuckle and roll pins since several forum posts pointed to that as an issue with adaptations failed when selecting 4th gear (I did't have these symptoms so I wasn't confident this would fix it). Put it all back together and the SMG pump back in and reran the bleed procedures a few times and then tried to adapt...another fail. I decided this time I needed better tooling to really see what the problem was so I ordered the Schwaben BMW scanner tool from ECS. This let me run the bleed procedures without a laptop as well as testing other functions. While that was in the main, I tried to install ISTA-D but never ended up using it. In INPA, I was able to activate the clutch, hydraulic pump and manually select every gear without any issue at all. Everything worked flawlessly in software.
I was at a lose as to what could be happening so I went over my work. Since I was still seeing the same type of failure, the full adaptation fails after about a minute, right after adapting the longitudinal sensor with the same message each time of 'could not establish overlap of clutch valve'. I pulled the pump out again and went over it with a fine toothed comb. I ran every procedure in Schwaben I could find including testing the accumulator which came back low pressure. Working pressure was 29-41 bar and mine was testing at 27bar. From the factory they are sealed with nitrogen and when they age, you just need to replace them (there is a company in the UK that I guess cuts them open and refurbishes them but I didn't go that route.).
I decided to throw more money at it by buying a replacement used accumulator (new ones are close to $1000) and a pressure switch. Pump out again and torn down, re-checked everything AGAIN and this time it goes back in with the newish accumulator and pressure switch. I also ordered a brand new clutch slave in this time and installed that while the trans was installed. This wasn't hard but lining up the rod on the clutch fork was tricky with the line already installed but it was doable. I recommend draining the SMG reservoir as fluid will poor out through the pump unit and through the lines freely.
Bleed. Bleed. Fail.
I was at a total lose and chasing ghosts now. I thought that maybe the SMG computer was bad or there was an air lock in the clutch slave line however I wasn't convinced of either. This issue was keeping me up at night a this point and I wanted to get to the bottom on this. On almost all other threads, the issues aren't nearly as well documented, the OP never posts what the resolution was or they just give up and say they are swapping to manual. I didn't want to do any of those things. I was going to get this figured out for my own sanity and I guess to document it here in case anyone else has a similar issue.
It was this morning that I had lost all hope and thought I was just going to bring it to a local shop and pay them to fix what I couldn't (which I always want to avoid since I'm a read DIYer and have rebuilt everything else on this car myself including the big 3). I put the entire car back together and started it up. Seemed to run fine. Clutch engaged almost immediately when hitting the gas so the grab point was very high. I drove it for about 15 miles and got it hot, as other forum posts stated they had good luck with running adaptations when the car was warm. Got back home and used Schwaben since I had it with me in the car to run the full adaptation. Failed.
I then decided to run some other tests in Schwaben, like 'Teach in clutch valve characteristic values' which passed. This was new as that had never passed before. I moved on to the next test which was 'teach in clutch slipping point' which also passed after having had to turn the car on, but only took less than 30 seconds. I then ran 'adapt transmission completely' for what would be the final time. This time, it passed. The cog light went away and that was it. Problem solved.
What I think happened is that since I had cleared the adaptation values when trying the very first time, the car had nothing to go on. After having driven the car for 15 miles, it build up the adaptation driving characteristics that it needed to then learn the other two pieces of information before finally allowing the system to adapt fully. Had I know this to be true, I would have stopped a few months ago, done this after swapping the electric motor on the pump and then wouldn't have missed an entire season of driving and track. Oh well. I did replace the failing accumulator which when I received the newish one, tested within the good range that the system wanted so that's a win I wouldn't have otherwise known about.
Tools used:
Schwaben Foxwell BMW OBD Tool
INPA
CarSoft 1.4
ISTA-D
M3cutters and this forum
Parts purchased:
SMG pump electric motor
Pump rebuild kit which included all seals and temp sensor
Pressure switch
Accumulator tank
Spare gear selector hardline (I broke mine so this was my fault)
2x clutch slave cylinders
Clutch
Flywheel
various seals and output bushings
Probably other things I can't remember
It was a long and expensive journey but the end result is that the car works perfectly and I have some spare parts for the shelf now. Any questions, feel free to PM me or post here and I'll do my best to answer anything I can. I'm not a coding expert but I can usually troubleshoot pretty well and since I love this car, I didn't want to give up. I had it 6 years now and there is nothing I see myself replacing it with. It's fast enough, cheap enough and fun enough for me.
//SAVE THE SMG
Original post:
I’m running into an issue with INPA clutch adaptations after a new clutch and slave for my SMG car. SMG pump is freshly rebuilt/motor replaced and everything on the trans is new as well. Bleeding the gear selector and clutch through INPA works perfectly but I fail adaptations almost right away. I’d like to run adaptations through DIS or someone else’s INPA install if possible. Anyone in the area free this weekend for a bit?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Full timeline and list of parts and actions taken below.
The car is 2004 M3 (PY) with 112k miles, very well maintained. I've never touched the SMG or trans systems on this car outside of changing the trans oil and fresh CHF-11S when I swapped to a Karbonius CSL intake. I also had HTE flash the CSL SMG software for the faster shifting and rev matching.
Original issue: I was driving in heavy traffic and the car went into N, cog light came on and would not shift back to first. I was in the left lane on Rt. 95 (highway) and was very lucky that an RS6 driver that I was next to quickly pulled over to the left shoulder in front of me and helped me push the car to the shoulder behind him. If it weren't for him, I would have blocked traffic for miles (my 5yo daughter was in the car so just me getting out was a no-go).
First inspection was to scan the codes with INPA which I had previously installed on an old laptop. I believe there were two codes; pump switching on and low/no pressure in the system. After some searching, that pointed me to the electric motor on the SMG pump unit to be the issue. I removed the intake and then the pump unit. Unfortunately, one of the hydraulic lines would not come loose as it looked like someone was in there previous to my ownership and rounded over the line nut on the 4th line (closest to the fill port) so I had to cut the line and got a replacement on ebay. All I did was remove the motor and noticed that it had burned up (some melting on the inside center told me the motor was toast). I ordered a replacement from MLREng (all my SMG parts came from them) and then reinstalled the SMG pump unit, having not done any other work to it (first mistake).
While the motors can fail, this is often indicative of another issue and just replacing the motor may lead to a failure down the road unless the root cause is found and solve, which I believe I did later on in this story.
After reinstalled the pump unit, I fired up INPA again and started to bleed the actuator, then the clutch slave using the special functions in the INPA version from Mike's BMW Tools. I then made the mistake of running the full adaptations (second mistake). Running the adaptations exposes and flaw in the system that isn't factory perfect. Once I ran this, and then subsequently failed, that's the the real problems arose.
Before the next step. I decided to drive the car to see if it was even possible...and it was. The car drive fine but was a little slow to change gear but the clutch engaged fine. I thought that since this was happening, there had some be something preventing the car from knowing the clutch parameters but I didn't know what. I can't drive a car, especially a weekend cruiser/track toy with a light on the dash. Also you can't pass inspection in MA with a light on, so now I need to figure out why the light was on and how to clear it. The traditional way of clearing codes won't work for this error as the trans need to adapt for the code to clear. No adaption means when you clear it, it comes right back on.
I took the SMG pump unit back out and decided to replace the seals using the thread on this forum as a guide. After buying and installing the seals and a temp sensor, pump went back in, bleed and bleed (important note that I was not just bleeding once with INPA, I would bleed both procedures several times to make sure I got all the air out of the lines). I also tested all 4 solenoids with a 12v source and all were clicking like they should. Reinstalled and then reran the adaptations with another failed result.
Next I thought the issue would be with the clutch since the adaptation would fail with 'could not establish overlap of clutch valve' error note in INPA through a google translation. I ended up removing the trans completely and doing a full inspection. While my clutch slave was old, it was still working fine or so I though but I decided to replace it with a used one. I also thought I should replace the clutch and flywheel since the trans was out anyway. I ended up replacing the clutch/flywheel, rear main seal, trans input seal, trans output seal and the gear shaft selector seal while I was in there. Also the clutch fork, steel pivot pin and the fork collar too. I also removed the gear selector completely and lubricated the selector shaft knuckle and roll pins since several forum posts pointed to that as an issue with adaptations failed when selecting 4th gear (I did't have these symptoms so I wasn't confident this would fix it). Put it all back together and the SMG pump back in and reran the bleed procedures a few times and then tried to adapt...another fail. I decided this time I needed better tooling to really see what the problem was so I ordered the Schwaben BMW scanner tool from ECS. This let me run the bleed procedures without a laptop as well as testing other functions. While that was in the main, I tried to install ISTA-D but never ended up using it. In INPA, I was able to activate the clutch, hydraulic pump and manually select every gear without any issue at all. Everything worked flawlessly in software.
I was at a lose as to what could be happening so I went over my work. Since I was still seeing the same type of failure, the full adaptation fails after about a minute, right after adapting the longitudinal sensor with the same message each time of 'could not establish overlap of clutch valve'. I pulled the pump out again and went over it with a fine toothed comb. I ran every procedure in Schwaben I could find including testing the accumulator which came back low pressure. Working pressure was 29-41 bar and mine was testing at 27bar. From the factory they are sealed with nitrogen and when they age, you just need to replace them (there is a company in the UK that I guess cuts them open and refurbishes them but I didn't go that route.).
I decided to throw more money at it by buying a replacement used accumulator (new ones are close to $1000) and a pressure switch. Pump out again and torn down, re-checked everything AGAIN and this time it goes back in with the newish accumulator and pressure switch. I also ordered a brand new clutch slave in this time and installed that while the trans was installed. This wasn't hard but lining up the rod on the clutch fork was tricky with the line already installed but it was doable. I recommend draining the SMG reservoir as fluid will poor out through the pump unit and through the lines freely.
Bleed. Bleed. Fail.
I was at a total lose and chasing ghosts now. I thought that maybe the SMG computer was bad or there was an air lock in the clutch slave line however I wasn't convinced of either. This issue was keeping me up at night a this point and I wanted to get to the bottom on this. On almost all other threads, the issues aren't nearly as well documented, the OP never posts what the resolution was or they just give up and say they are swapping to manual. I didn't want to do any of those things. I was going to get this figured out for my own sanity and I guess to document it here in case anyone else has a similar issue.
It was this morning that I had lost all hope and thought I was just going to bring it to a local shop and pay them to fix what I couldn't (which I always want to avoid since I'm a read DIYer and have rebuilt everything else on this car myself including the big 3). I put the entire car back together and started it up. Seemed to run fine. Clutch engaged almost immediately when hitting the gas so the grab point was very high. I drove it for about 15 miles and got it hot, as other forum posts stated they had good luck with running adaptations when the car was warm. Got back home and used Schwaben since I had it with me in the car to run the full adaptation. Failed.
I then decided to run some other tests in Schwaben, like 'Teach in clutch valve characteristic values' which passed. This was new as that had never passed before. I moved on to the next test which was 'teach in clutch slipping point' which also passed after having had to turn the car on, but only took less than 30 seconds. I then ran 'adapt transmission completely' for what would be the final time. This time, it passed. The cog light went away and that was it. Problem solved.
What I think happened is that since I had cleared the adaptation values when trying the very first time, the car had nothing to go on. After having driven the car for 15 miles, it build up the adaptation driving characteristics that it needed to then learn the other two pieces of information before finally allowing the system to adapt fully. Had I know this to be true, I would have stopped a few months ago, done this after swapping the electric motor on the pump and then wouldn't have missed an entire season of driving and track. Oh well. I did replace the failing accumulator which when I received the newish one, tested within the good range that the system wanted so that's a win I wouldn't have otherwise known about.
Tools used:
Schwaben Foxwell BMW OBD Tool
INPA
CarSoft 1.4
ISTA-D
M3cutters and this forum
Parts purchased:
SMG pump electric motor
Pump rebuild kit which included all seals and temp sensor
Pressure switch
Accumulator tank
Spare gear selector hardline (I broke mine so this was my fault)
2x clutch slave cylinders
Clutch
Flywheel
various seals and output bushings
Probably other things I can't remember
It was a long and expensive journey but the end result is that the car works perfectly and I have some spare parts for the shelf now. Any questions, feel free to PM me or post here and I'll do my best to answer anything I can. I'm not a coding expert but I can usually troubleshoot pretty well and since I love this car, I didn't want to give up. I had it 6 years now and there is nothing I see myself replacing it with. It's fast enough, cheap enough and fun enough for me.
//SAVE THE SMG
Original post:
I’m running into an issue with INPA clutch adaptations after a new clutch and slave for my SMG car. SMG pump is freshly rebuilt/motor replaced and everything on the trans is new as well. Bleeding the gear selector and clutch through INPA works perfectly but I fail adaptations almost right away. I’d like to run adaptations through DIS or someone else’s INPA install if possible. Anyone in the area free this weekend for a bit?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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