[quiksilver m3]

Has anyone in here done an instrument cluster swap?

I have an 06 E90 03 build and I need to put in a new cluster, so I am looking at ebay.
Of course the clusters on ebay arent the same mileage as my cluster and I am wondering if it will display a different mileage when I install the new cluster and will I have to go to someone to reprogram it or something?

Just dont want to end up with a discrepency between the actual mileage and the mileage that is say recorded on the title

[808AWD325xi]

This thread has lots of info:
Coding M3 cluster http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1174832

[quiksilver m3]

808,
Should the new Instrument Cluster show the mileage of the car it came from, or the mileage of my car?
I am not sure I understand the link you sent me correctly
I think If I understand it, if I recode it with the mini coders... it will show the actual mileage of the car?

[wildcatcrazy]

Originally Posted by quiksilver m3

808,
Should the new Instrument Cluster show the mileage of the car it came from, or the mileage of my car?
I am not sure I understand the link you sent me correctly
I think If I understand it, if I recode it with the mini coders... it will show the actual mileage of the car?

Until your VIN is programmed to EEPROM (cluster), it will display your actual mileage with a tamper dot.

If the donor cluster has higher mileage and it's programmed to your car, your car will then automatically assume the higher mileage.

If the donor cluster has lower mileage and is programmed to your car, then it will assume your actual mileage and all will be good.


All can fixed if a virgin EEPROM is installed...

[quiksilver m3]

wild cat crazy

ok, could you break it down a little bit more for me


so if i have a instrument cluster came from a car that had 174k
and my car has 125k,

what will the instrument cluster display?

about the display and the dot thing?

Thanks

[Sensible_]

Originally Posted by quiksilver m3

wild cat crazy

ok, could you break it down a little bit more for me


so if i have a instrument cluster came from a car that had 174k
and my car has 125k,

what will the instrument cluster display?

about the display and the dot thing?

Thanks

If you put that cluster in your car it will read your odo but with a tamper dot visible.

If you put the cluster in as virgin vin state and program vin then all your ECU's which store odometer reading will automatically take the higher value! Be careful with this -> big headache repairing modules with correct odo.

If you put the cluster in, in complete virgin state - empty vin and empty odo - program vin, new cluster takes correct odo reading from CAS. Happy days - all correct and no dot.

[nate5ks]

I'm interested in doing this. What EEPROM programmer should I buy and which chip am I looking for?

[Sensible_]

Originally Posted by nate5ks

I'm interested in doing this. What EEPROM programmer should I buy and which chip am I looking for?

Depends on what chip is inside your KOMBI.

I've done a lot of these and seen the following in e90 KOMBI:

MS35080
MS35080v6
080D0WQ

No need to buy a new chip. To save heat gun and resoldering os possible to program the chip directly when it's connected to the board via an SOIC 8 test clip. Literally clips onto chips 8 'legs'.

R270+ is good however might not do onboard for 080D0WQ or newer 160D0WQ.

This advertises full onboard support however:

http://www.microcontroller-cafe.com/?l=M35160-ERASER

Just read the flash in bin format, FF bytes with short vin, 00 odometer bytes and its virgin. Write it back to chip, read chip again to verify changes then connect to NCSEXPERT, code KOMBI to default via expert mode, vin will be written and its done.

[quiksilver m3]

Sensible

Ok I totally got lost here.
Sorry I REALLY appreciate the help, but I am not electrically tech savvy. Not sure what a KOMBI is and all
so please dumb it down for me just a little bit BUT I appreciate all the tech you give me and will appreciate it and try to learn from you


I just wondering if the new gauge cluster that I bought for my e90 will display the 125k that I have on the car, or will it display the 174k that was on the cluster that I bought. The parts yard said the cluster will display the cars mileage (not the mileage of the cluster). I just want to make sure before I buy it.

[Sensible_]

Originally Posted by quiksilver m3

Sensible

Ok I totally got lost here.
Sorry I REALLY appreciate the help, but I am not electrically tech savvy. Not sure what a KOMBI is and all
so please dumb it down for me just a little bit BUT I appreciate all the tech you give me and will appreciate it and try to learn from you


I just wondering if the new gauge cluster that I bought for my e90 will display the 125k that I have on the car, or will it display the 174k that was on the cluster that I bought. The parts yard said the cluster will display the cars mileage (not the mileage of the cluster). I just want to make sure before I buy it.

No worries,

KOMBI is the module name of the Instrument Cluster - it comes from the German derivative 'Kombi-Instrument'.

That's correct. If you plug a used cluster in with mismatched VIN and Mileage / KM reading to the data stored in your CAS module, the cluster will display YOUR Mileage, however a 'Tamper Dot' will be visible on the display. I would be careful with this. It's not illegal as long as you aren't selling the vehicle, but it should really be paired to the vehicle.

[quiksilver m3]

Ok and and how do you reflash this? or virgin it? or pair it or what ever it is that needs to be done to show the mileage on the car, or the mileage on the kombi, or the instrument cluster, or whatever?
now I am interested?
I looked up that one board thing you posted, but then I wasnt sure how that worked and then I saw this thing called a minichip or something?
does that work?
will that make my instrument gauge right?

plus I bought the gt1 software to plug into the car, does that plug into the KOMBI or did i waste my money since I already have a reset tool from peake

ok as you can see i have had my coffee

[Sensible_]

Ok I'll try to outline the process. You bought GT-1? You didn't need this but it's a good piece of kit for diagnostics / coding / programming.

The VIN and mileage in the instrument cluster is stored in the EEPROM of a flash chip. Commonly for E9X variants the chip is M35080 (v6). BMW software will not be able to modify VIN and Mileage as the EEPROM is designed to only be programmed once. So VIN and Mileage can be written once when those bytes in the EEPROM are empty and not overwritten. This is because unlike other modules (except CAS / DME) VIN and Mileage is protected data for obvious reasons.

The only way around this is to talk directly to the EEPROM and not via the cars CAN bus. To do this you either need to desolder (with heat gun) the chip, place it into a dedicated chip programmer like the link I gave or R270+ or XPROG. These are devices which connect to a computer with their own software where you can read the EEPROM data into a *.bin format commonly called EEPROM 'dump'. Once you have the dump you need to open it in a hex editor, find the VIN bytes and patch the bytes to all 'FF'. If the cluster mileage is higher than your vehicle you'll need to also zero that by making the mileage bytes all '00'. Once those two patches are complete you can write the dump back to the EEPROM. Once written you can connect the cluster to your car replacing your existing one. The car will believe the cluster is in a 'factory' or 'virgin' state. You can then use your GT-1 and NCSEXPERT to code the cluster back to default. The process will auto fill the VIN and it will then take the cars mileag. Job done.

If you don't fancy desoldering the chip, some chips can be read and written to whilst still attached to the board using a SOIC 8 test clip. This clip connects to the programmer I.e. R270 and then clips over the EEPROM chip. However some chips may be wrote protected whilst on the board, you need to check this in the chip data sheet and programmer you are using.

[quiksilver m3]

I have got to say that is all interesting.
I enjoy finding out more and more about the way the cars are designed and setup.
I bought this GT1/SSS dx software thinking it would let more know more about the car, but it is running on my laptop so it is hard to run through since I am having to always switch back and forth between the laptop and the linux workstation. I have a Peake scanner/ reset too. Thats a definite MUST HAVE tool.

Its amazing the tech that is in these things.
I mean just all that tech just for an speedo/ odometer. unreal.

[RustyBMW]

Hey guys! So I guess that you figured out a solution for this (hopefully). The temperature unit burned out on my instrument cluster on my E90 due to a voltage spike (I'm 95% positive). Some fog light/horn wires came in contact with the 3-4V temperature sensor wires which comes directly into the cluster. So after a new sensor and lots of wiring testing, I think I can finally conclude that the temperature unit burned out on my cluster so I need to replace it.

If i bought used cluster from the same make and model as my car, would I be able to swap the eeprom chips and have no tamper issues and have my original mileage? Any help would be gladly appreciated because I've been having a massive headache the past few days trying to figure this out. Thanks!

[LadyMercury]

Hello everyone. I have a similar but somewhat unique situation with my instrument cluster. I've read through a lot of this thread and other posts on here and other forums. For the most part I've been able to comprehend what I'm reading, and most of it makes sense, but I am dealing with a problem that I'm not seeing described or having been trouble shot elsewhere.

Some background for context. I bought my first BMW, a '07 328i, from a used car lot in March of '15, I'm the second owner. Carfax mileage reporting looked sound, no major accidents, etc. At the time it was purchased the odometer tamper dot was displaying, but I was ignorant of what it was and did not realize how much trouble it would give me down the road.

At the time the car was sold to me the mileage displayed was just shy of 68k. I drove it daily without issue until October 23rd [the mileage was at around 81k] I started the car to head to the store and I noticed my odometer was displaying less than 48k miles. I spent the next few days searching the net for an explanation for what happened and determined I needed help from a mechanic to figure out if I had been sold a car with a tampered odometer or if something less sinister was responsible.

In December I had the money to deal with this and I took it to a highly recommended local BMW mechanic, not the dealership; they determined that I had a used instrument cluster from another vehicle [that had lower miles] installed that had not been programmed correctly so the cluster was displaying the mileage for the donor car. They told me they'd program it for me to make sure it displayed my car's mileage. I paid them $165 to do this, now I know I wasted $165.

They told me they were able to program the cluster to display the information for my car and verified my car's mileage was in line with what I was sold. However, they were unable to make the instrument cluster's VIN match my car, so I would still see the tamper dot but my info would be displayed. I hadn't dug into these coding forums at this point so I accepted their work as being complete because it was displaying the mileage it was supposed to; of course I now know they did a half-assed coding job because the VINs can be made to match.

Last Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, the odometer rolled back to the 48k mileage. I went back to the shop the next day to let them know that less than 30 days since they supposedly fixed it the instrument cluster is having the same problem. Their response was to tell me I needed a new cluster at a cost of $1k in parts alone. I walked right the fuck out of there being so upset to hear this when I felt they at least owed me a better attempt at re-coding the current cluster.

Now for the uniqueness of my issue, some of you may have noticed it already, from what I've read on these coding and instrument cluster swapping threads if the VIN on the EEPROM for the donor cluster doesn't match the VIN for the control module then the donor cluster is supposed to default to display the higher mileage # with the tamper dot. My cluster is not behaving this way. It is showing the LOWER mileage # of the donor car with the tamper dot.

Do I really need to buy a new cluster?
Are there any cheaper or easier options out there than buying and installing a "virgin" cluster?
Is there anywhere on these forums where I could find people who are more competent at coding clusters in the Central Texas area?

Thank you for any and all help with my queries.

[RustyBMW]

Originally Posted by LadyMercury

Do I really need to buy a new cluster?
Are there any cheaper or easier options out there than buying and installing a "virgin" cluster?
Is there anywhere on these forums where I could find people who are more competent at coding clusters in the Central Texas area?

I found the issue with my cluster (burnt trace on the circuit board) for my temperature issue. Think long and hard about this but my options would've been (if I had to replace my cluster which I'm praying to God that I don't need to) are as follows:

Go online and buy a new/"virgin" eeprom chip that has the same model number as the one you currently have in your cluster, and send it in to a professional coder or code it yourself. You can probably find some good coders here on this forum, just PM them and tell them your situation and ask if they can code it for you. That eeprom chip contains the cars mileage and the cars VIN information. If the VIN information on there matches the VIN in the car then you won't/shouldnt be getting that tamper dot issue.

I'm just a little confused as to what the exact mileage is supposed to be on the car itself. Forget all the odometer readings and different chips and different clusters, do you know the mileage that is on the car itself?

The dealer can only code a new cluster (because it contains a new eeprom chip in it) so I'm curious to see if the dealer can code a used cluster with a new chip.

Or I guess my other option is to find someone who can properly code your car. Not some cheap mechanics who are all about making money, and not caring about their customers.

[wildcatcrazy]

Originally Posted by LadyMercury

Hello everyone. I have a similar but somewhat unique situation with my instrument cluster. I've read through a lot of this thread and other posts on here and other forums. For the most part I've been able to comprehend what I'm reading, and most of it makes sense, but I am dealing with a problem that I'm not seeing described or having been trouble shot elsewhere.

Some background for context. I bought my first BMW, a '07 328i, from a used car lot in March of '15, I'm the second owner. Carfax mileage reporting looked sound, no major accidents, etc. At the time it was purchased the odometer tamper dot was displaying, but I was ignorant of what it was and did not realize how much trouble it would give me down the road.

At the time the car was sold to me the mileage displayed was just shy of 68k. I drove it daily without issue until October 23rd [the mileage was at around 81k] I started the car to head to the store and I noticed my odometer was displaying less than 48k miles. I spent the next few days searching the net for an explanation for what happened and determined I needed help from a mechanic to figure out if I had been sold a car with a tampered odometer or if something less sinister was responsible.

In December I had the money to deal with this and I took it to a highly recommended local BMW mechanic, not the dealership; they determined that I had a used instrument cluster from another vehicle [that had lower miles] installed that had not been programmed correctly so the cluster was displaying the mileage for the donor car. They told me they'd program it for me to make sure it displayed my car's mileage. I paid them $165 to do this, now I know I wasted $165.

They told me they were able to program the cluster to display the information for my car and verified my car's mileage was in line with what I was sold. However, they were unable to make the instrument cluster's VIN match my car, so I would still see the tamper dot but my info would be displayed. I hadn't dug into these coding forums at this point so I accepted their work as being complete because it was displaying the mileage it was supposed to; of course I now know they did a half-assed coding job because the VINs can be made to match.

Last Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, the odometer rolled back to the 48k mileage. I went back to the shop the next day to let them know that less than 30 days since they supposedly fixed it the instrument cluster is having the same problem. Their response was to tell me I needed a new cluster at a cost of $1k in parts alone. I walked right the fuck out of there being so upset to hear this when I felt they at least owed me a better attempt at re-coding the current cluster.

Now for the uniqueness of my issue, some of you may have noticed it already, from what I've read on these coding and instrument cluster swapping threads if the VIN on the EEPROM for the donor cluster doesn't match the VIN for the control module then the donor cluster is supposed to default to display the higher mileage # with the tamper dot. My cluster is not behaving this way. It is showing the LOWER mileage # of the donor car with the tamper dot.

Do I really need to buy a new cluster?
Are there any cheaper or easier options out there than buying and installing a "virgin" cluster?
Is there anywhere on these forums where I could find people who are more competent at coding clusters in the Central Texas area?

Thank you for any and all help with my queries.

PM me your area in TX? I may have someone for you in the Dallas area.

[LadyMercury]

Originally Posted by RustyBMW

I'm just a little confused as to what the exact mileage is supposed to be on the car itself. Forget all the odometer readings and different chips and different clusters, do you know the mileage that is on the car itself?

Yes, the brain for the car has the actual mileage, it's at around 83k at this point. It was last checked/verified in December '15 when they did the half-assed re-code.

Originally Posted by RustyBMW

The dealer can only code a new cluster (because it contains a new eeprom chip in it) so I'm curious to see if the dealer can code a used cluster with a new chip.

Not giving the stealership any of my money. From reading this thread and other forums coding a used EEPROM is possible with a competent coder who has the proper tools on hand.

Originally Posted by RustyBMW

...other option is to find someone who can properly code your car. Not some cheap mechanics who are all about making money, and not caring about their customers.

That's why I'm here, I figured who better than the DIY community to find the expertise I am in need of.

[deepsrd]

Get yourself a MiniPro-TL866CS-Universal-BIOS-Programmer

Follow steps here:
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=666729

Make sure you clear the VIN and mileage.

Fit the cluster back, and code with your FA.

Aaaand, report back if it works..

[Dtype]

It's possible to flash kombi with winkfp and put new VIN on it?

[deepsrd]

No, you have to read the EEPROM, blank the VIN, write to EEPROM..
Then you can code it with NCSExpert..

[Dtype]

Originally Posted by deepsrd

No, you have to read the EEPROM, blank the VIN, write to EEPROM..
Then you can code it with NCSExpert..

Thanks
There is any way that will let me read epprom without taking out the needles?
I'm changing my cluster from low to high.