[RedRaiderDavid]

Hello, I just wanted to say thank you to all who have posted instructions to this forum. I was out of town in the middle of nowhere for Thanksgiving and my battery failed. Not being near a BMW dealership I bought one at Autozone. I already knew about batt registration from this site and was already planning to buy a cable so I could do some basic programming so I figured $100 for a cable vs 2 hours of labor (what they quoted) to get my battery registered was a no brainer. I ordered the recommended cable and got it yesterday. The new Autozone H8-DLG has a 185 reserve capacity which works out to 108.5 ah using the conversion in the registration guide. I used NFS Expert to change the charging rate from 70 (or 90 can't remember) to 110. I then used Tool 32 to register the battery. All thanks to existing guides on this board, many, many thanks!
Now that I have the cable its time for angel eye DRLs, auto on driving lights and DVD in motion.

[ophale]

RedRaiderDavid,

I had the same problem this Thanksgiving. However I was at home, just didn't drive the car. Come Sunday, click, lights blinking, then nothing. Called the dealer Monday and they quoted me $573 to replace with same 90 Ah lead/acid type battery and register it. That was 2x times I was willing to pay, so asked what the price of the battery would be, they quoted $334.

So off to Oreily's for a super start 185 reserve capacity battery. I changed out the old one with help from the online instructional videos. Ordered my cable from one-stop and waiting for its arrival to code and register. Did a little research on the battery to determine the Ah rating. Found out that the super start battery is made by Deka (East Penn Manufacturing) and they have a PDF with the Ah rating @ 100Ah. http://www.dekabatteries.com/assets/base/0379.pdf I also used the formula which states that you divide the Reserve Capacity by two and added 16 which yielded a 108.5Ah value. I also read that the formula is an approximation.

I'm not sure if I will code for 110Ah or leave it at 90Ah...

Anyway, I like to thank the community for all the helpful info provided on forums like this one! I don't mind supporting the dealer or local shops, but... $168 for a battery plus 1/2 hour of my labor and a few minutes to register and code. Does not equal $573.

Aloha!