heinzboehmer's 2012 Alpine White 128i

[heinzboehmer]

Recalibrating the steering angle sensor now. Good thought.

Pressures look good and it did it to me on the Richmond bridge today with a cross wind. It’s probably the steering angle sensor, let’s hope at least.

edit: scratch that, steering angle sensor was straight already :/

Hmm, not sure what else could be causing it. Maybe the different sized wheel + tires on the non-M body are throwing the system off? Supposedly the system should learn the diameter of each tire when it's reset, but I'm not sure how it actually works. Very much a black box.

[heinzboehmer]

Managed to get the TPMS disabled and the FTM enabled today.

First thing I did was remove the TPMS module. It's underneath the car and very much feels like an afterthought:



It's also extremely light and hollow feeling. So much so that it makes me think that it's just the antenna, even though TIS says this is all there is. I followed the wires leading to it, but gave up once they got lost in the wheel well. Would be nice to remove everything, but it's the daily and I don't need to be stripping it to make a racecar, so whatever.

Then came the coding. There's a bunch of different info out there on how to do it, but this is what worked on my car:

• Removed $2VB from the VA
• FA_WRITE to CAS and NFRM
• Default coded DSC, CIC and CAS

iDrive wasn't super happy after the coding:



Clicking reset made it change its mind:



Seemed like everything was working well, but I wanted to make sure it actually did what it was supposed to do. I let out air from the front right tire until it was at 20 psi and drove the car around. Eventually I got this:




It also showed a warning on the dash that's pretty hard to ignore. Very useful since the iDrive screen is showing carplay/android auto most of the time now:



I actually struggled a lot to get the system to react to the low tire. Had to air back up and reset multiple times. This system seems a lot less sensitive than the E46 one, but whatever, it seems to work.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with this. Less complexity, less things to fail and less cost when swapping wheels

[heinzboehmer]

Getting close to having this thing be fully presentable. Interior refresh was one of the last things on the list.

All the trim in the center console was messed up. Not sure what happened but that soft touch finish was peeling on a bunch of the pieces. I first tried to get rid of the coating and leave the bare plastic, but that didn't turn out great:




So I decided to just send the trim out to TexaZ3. The cupholders are plastic riveted to the center console (thanks BMW), but fortunately it wasn't too bad to get them out. Took the center console out and drilled out the formed heads of the rivets:



Here's how the trim looked after it got refinished:



Sooo much better, especially compared to how the cupholder part was before sending it out:




Since I drilled out the plastic rivets holding the cupholder insert in, I had to figure out how to resecure it. I managed to put some screws through half of the rivets and that held it pretty firmly in place. I also added some plastic epoxy to the rest of the rivets just to make sure it didn't go anywhere:



The screw heads are facing down when installed in the car, so I'm hoping the friction against the plastic keeps them in place. To help them stay in place, I super glued the heads to the plastic. I also painted some (hard to see) lines so that I can know how much of a waste of time the super glue was next time I take the center console out:



Here's everything back together:



Looks so much nicer than before. Pretty pleased with how this came out. Now just need to give both the interior and exterior a good clean.

[heinzboehmer]

Realized I never posted up a picture of the car on the snow wheels. There was unfortunately no snow on the ground when I was up in the mountains, but I did snap a picture of the winter machine next to some less practical cars:



I also bought a set of 215/45 R17 PS4Ss and got them mounted on the summer wheels this weekend. The car feels so much better on those than on the shitty runflats it came with. I'm glad its finally on some proper tires.

[heinzboehmer]

Another thing that bothered me about the car was the mapping of the previous/next buttons on the steering wheel. Stock, the up arrow maps to previous track and the down arrow maps to next track. Apparently it's only this way on cars with iDrive. On cars without it, the button mapping is the other way around, which is what I prefer.

I popped the buttons out in hopes that changing the mapping would only require swapping two wires in the connector, but it turns out the button modules are a bit more complicated than that. Boards only have resistors on them, so they're probably just made up of a bunch of voltage dividers. I didn't feel like reverse engineering the boards, though, so I did the lazy thing instead.

Traces cut and solder mask stripped back:



Jumpers added:



Very ugly and very hacky, but it works just fine. Now the up arrow maps to next and the down arrow maps to previous. Small change, but a nice one.

[heinzboehmer]

Finally got started on the factory alarm wiring retrofit. As mentioned earlier, BMW stopped prewiring cars for the alarm at some point and this car is one of the lucky ones that didn't come prewired. Alarm system is composed of the following three components, each of which will need custom harnesses made and ran to them:

1. Ultrasonic sensor in headliner
2. Speaker/tilt sensor in rear left wheel well
3. Hood close sensor in engine bay

The last two involve a decent amount of interior disassembly, so I decided to start with the ultrasonic sensor. All the wires for it run to the front dome light, so making and running the harness is super simple.

I jumped on eBay and bought some pigtails so that I could get all the sensor connectors, then got to work. For future reference, I followed this wiring diagram in TIS for all of this:

BMW E82 128i Coupe / Wiring Diagrams and Functional Description / Body / Locking and security functions / Alarm system

Ultrasonic sensor harness made:



Only catch with the ultrasonic sensor is that this car did not come with the larger rear dome light needed to house the sensor. Looking at pictures, it seemed like the headliners were the same but a different sized hole was cut into them, so I ordered the larger rear dome light and got to cutting.

Smaller dome light that the car came with:



Removed and rough outline traced for new part:



First rough cut:



Aluminum perimeter bracket removed and final outline marked out:



Final cuts made and harness ran through:



Harness pinned into the appropriate front dome light connector:



At this point, the new rear dome light fit fine and had the harness that it needed. However, I wanted to retain at least some of that aluminum perimeter bracket because it both holds the headliner fabric to the headliner structure and also provides a mounting point for the headliner to the metal roof skin (with velcro!).

Cut off the interfering bit:



This is how it fits onto the new rear dome light:



I tried attaching the section that was cut off to the rear of the new hole, but it didn't work all that great. The larger dome light grabs onto the headliner at an angle and the metal edge was a bit too large to slot nicely into it. So instead, I cut off two of the tabs and placed them where the two rear dome light tabs grab onto the headliner. This gives them something solid to grab onto and also helps keep the fabric from getting moved around too much when installing.



Next time I'm at a junkyard, I'll look for a car with this bracket and scavenge it. I tried finding it new from BMW, but didn't have any luck. My frankenbracket works totally fine though, so not overly concerned.

Here's the final product:

[heinzboehmer]

I swapped wheels shortly after that, so I ran part of the harness for the alarm/tilt sensor.

The grommet that comes into the interior from the wheel well is just about visible in a corner in this pic:



Harness made, pushed into the car through that grommet hole and alarm bracket installed:




I then pulled the grommet in and ran the wires through it. Wheel speed sensor wires were already running through it, so just ran the new wires next to those:




I cut the wires after they were in the interior because I decided to add a break point there. Purple wire runs to the front dome light and red wire runs all the way to the fusebox behind the glovebox (brown wire is just a ground), so I figured it would be much nicer to make this a two piece harness.

Plan is to run the ground wire to a ground post nearby (there's the one visible in the pics above that I think is full and another a bit further back in the trunk) and the other two wires up the driver's side C pillar. From there, they'll run across the roof into the front dome light area. Purple will go to it's corresponding plug and red will run down the passenger's side A pillar and into the fusebox. Pretty sure these are routed differently from the factory, but doing it this way to minimize the amount of things I need to disassemble in the interior.

Last thing I did was install the alarm/tilt sensor with its provided housing and put everything back together:



And that's where I am now. Waiting on some pins to arrive so that I can finish up the rest of this harness, but it shouldn't be super hard. Once done, the only thing left to do will be to make the harness for the hood switch, which looks fairly straightforward as well.

[heinzboehmer]

I just learned that the pre-LCI mirrors use the same glass as the E46 M3. I don't really like the LCI E82 mirrors, they're super bulky and obstruct a surprising amount of your field of view. Much prefer the E46 M3 mirrors.

Hmm I think I need to start scouring eBay and craigslist for pre-LCI mirrors. I'll figure out how to retrofit (postfit?) them later.

[Bry5on]

I just learned that the pre-LCI mirrors use the same glass as the E46 M3. I don't really like the LCI E82 mirrors, they're super bulky and obstruct a surprising amount of your field of view. Much prefer the E46 M3 mirrors.

Hmm I think I need to start scouring eBay and craigslist for pre-LCI mirrors. I'll figure out how to retrofit (postfit?) them later.

Lots of e90s in the wrecking yards. Maybe make a weekend trip? I need a pair of auto dimming ones for my M3 mirrors sitting on the shelf

[heinzboehmer]

Lots of e90s in the wrecking yards. Maybe make a weekend trip? I need a pair of auto dimming ones for my M3 mirrors sitting on the shelf

Are the bases the same? Much less experienced in the E8x/E9x world than in the E46 world

But yes, I have a whole list of E8/xE9x stuff that I need to grab from a junkyard, so we should hit one up soon.

[heinzboehmer]

Finished up all the electrical installs planned for the car. Started with the rest of the harness for the alarm siren. First, the ground. It's visible on the left of this pic:



Snaked it into the factory harness along the rest of the wires, terminated it and attached it to the factory ground post:





Then terminated the other two wires coming from the siren and added a connector. Did the same for the second part of the harness and connected them together:




Found a spot to pass it up to the c pillar and tucked it up right next to the existing harness, so as to not interfere with any airbags:




Same deal when passing it through the headliner. There's a dense foam divider that's probably (at least partly) there so that nothing obstructs the side airbag. Made sure to get the harness clear of that:



Then into the rear dome light area:



And into the front dome light area. Purple wire goes into the dome light and red wire goes to the fusebox (more on that later):



At the same time, I also ran the harnesses for the rear dashcam and the backup camera. First had to modify the adapter I made earlier to accommodate a second parking mode module (E82 stuff on the right, E46 stuff on the left):



Then the backup camera stuff got plugged in:



Backup camera wire went up the a pillar, siren power wire came down it. Again, wires got tucked against existing harness to stay out of the way of the airbag:





Wire from the rear dascham parking mode module and wire from the backup camera met up in the rear dome light area:



Then made their way to the passenger's side c pillar. Again, looked out for that foam piece in the headliner:




Rear dashcam goes right there, so end of the road for that wire. Backup camera wire came down the c pillar and into the trunk, where the excess got coiled up:



Then through the trunk grommet:



That rubber covered stainless steel wire was essential during all of this. Used it to run basically every wire and it worked awesome. Stiff enough to push through stuff (like the trunk grommet), but also flexible enough to get through tight spaces.

Anyway, here's the camera installed. Can't really tell it's not factory. Super happy with it:



Aaand then came the worst part of it all, wiring the siren power wire into the fusebox. Had to take basically the entire right side of the dash apart to get access to the screws that hold the fusebox in, which was tons of fun:



Finally got it out after lots of fiddling with it:



Power wire terminated:



Aaand installed:




No pictures of the reassembly because I was too busy being annoyed at BMW for the fusebox placement.

Anyway, the car now does the beep beep when unlocking! Very happy about that.

Couple things of note:

1. I was originally going to wire in the hood switch for the alarm, but ended up deciding against it. There was no easy way to get the wires through the existing grommet by the steering column and I really didn't want to poke a hole in it for fear of water ingress. I don't think it's super useful and the alarm works normally without it, so I skipped it.
2. I thought the wires just dangling in the headliner would be alright, but they are not. I can hear them moving around every now and again, so I guess I'm going to need to take the headliner out to actually fasten them. Car is a slicktop, so I'll probably just stick them to the roof with some of those zip tie adhesive cable holder things.

[heinzboehmer]

With all the electronic stuff out of the way came the last bits of the interior refresh.

First, the trunk switch. Stock one was pretty worn so I bought a new one. Decided to gamble with a no name eBay one because the genuine BMW switch was close to $60. Of course, this was not the right decision. Ended up having to take both apart and build a frankenswitch to have it fit correctly. Here's both of them:



Then came the ODB port. Original one had broken off its mounting points, so I bought a new one. Replacement was very tedious because I had to transfer over all the wires, which were surprisingly hard to get out of the original connector.

Broken one:



Swap in progress and completed:




Unrelated, but if your gauge cluster suddenly stops working after messing with the ODB port, check fuse 74, as it's shared by both.

At least I got to verify that the port still works after having to go in and clear CAN communication codes from a bunch of random modules...

Here's everything back together:



Not a huge fan of the placement honestly. The door card hits the usual chunky ODB cables and puts a torque on the mounting tab area of the connector. Original connector probably broke after someone closed the door with a cable plugged in. I should added a spacer to move it further inboard when reinstalling, but I didn't know this would be an issue. Oh well, project for another day.

With all the interior bits refreshed, I took some time to clean up the interior. Sun was out, so I decided to apply leatherique (even though the interior isn't leather) just to see what it did. Mostly a waste of time for this material to be honest. Probably would have gotten the same results with just a cleaner.

Did end up looking pretty great for almost 80k mi. Should have taken these pictures with my camera so I could remove all the harsh reflections with a polarizer filter. I'll do that some other time, but I promise the seats look a lot less shiny in person:






(Also, ignore the dirty carpets, that was from me cleaning up all the leathrique)

[tlow98]

I always thought the plastics came apart and went back together very well (aka, they didn’t break) on my e91. You finding the same on the e8x series?

nice work in here! Reminds of when we bought our F15. I couldn’t stay away for long. Lots of thoughtful additions in here. Looks great.

[heinzboehmer]

Thanks!

And yep, totally agree. So far have only cracked the A pillar, but that was only because it was stuck to the glass with windshield adhesive. Barely noticeable under the fabric, so I just left it.

[heinzboehmer]

Decided I didn't like having the android auto/carplay box in the glovebox. It worked perfectly fine and none of the cables got pinched, but it felt a bit lazy. The install instructions for it say to just throw it in front of the fusebox, but I really did not want to do that. The fuses are hard enough to get to as is, so I didn't want to make my life even harder.

After some messing around, I found that there was a spot underneath the passenger's dash vent, so I started taking things apart.

Glovebox out and harness laid on top of it to check lengths:



Wires zip tied together to form a harness and tucked up against the metal dash bar to keep it from interfering with the airbag:



(Yes, that poor wire is close to snapping. I disconnected it after this.)




Second part of the harness that comes in from the A pillar side tucked away:



Everything plugged in:



Added tesa tape to any surface that might come in contact with the box to avoid rattles:



Here is how the box sits now:




It's wedged between the metal dash bar and glovebox on one side (fits surprisingly perfectly in that gap) and then held up with a zip tie on the other side. Not exactly the most professional mount, but it seems to work alright. If I start hearing rattles, I'll design an actual mount, but so far so good.

Access to it is definitely a lot harder now. However, I haven't had to mess with it once since the original install, so I don't expect to need frequent access to it. If I do, it only really takes about 5 min to get the glovebox out, so not a huge deal. Also, with how it's oriented, I can access the dip switches by just removing the cover by the A pillar, which requires no tools.