[dumitru.o]

sure, no problem. you are welcome

[Moonwrth]

Originally Posted by dumitru.o

sure, no problem. you are welcome

Hi Dumitru, could you please contact me at cincar.luk@gmail.com? I am very interested in CA retrofit in my E90.
Thanks a lot

[Kainy]

ramez75 Thank you for the detailed post! I'm currently parting out an e92 and it happens to have Comfort Access, which I wanted to install on my car for sometime now. I even got another set of everything needed (except the wiring) a while back, but never got around to installing it.

Now with the parts car I decided to use the chance and inspect the wiring first before going forward with the install, as I am not very familiar with WDS, yet, to find the proper diagrams to orientate myself

Thus I have one question that someone might be helpful with and it is not mentioned in the main post:

As you mentioned, aside from the antennas there are few other wires:

2 white ones for the door handles, one red/yellow for power and one brown for ground.

However, there is one more white wire, that as I understand should go to the CAS and I am not sure to which pin.

Also the power wire, from the diagram I found, does go to the fusebox behind the glovebox, where you show it, but from I am seeing in my loom it first goest to the driver's side (still haven't followed it where exactly) and returns as two red/yellow wires - one goes to the fuse box, the other one goes to the passenger door connector.

And finally there is a blue/yellow wire that goes to the rear view mirror (chromatic)

So my question is: What is the pin for the white wire in the CAS. Where does the red/yellow wire actually go (I don't want to remove the AC core, yet) and what does the CA system have to do with the chromatic rear view mirror

Any info or even just the correct WDS diagrams would be appreciated, while in the meantime I'll try my luck with the multimeter to try and ping the wires on the other side

[Serf27]

On the CA module connector, pin 17 goes to the CAS module.
White wire on pin 1 goes to the driver door.
White wire on pin 4 goes to the passenger door.


I have not looked at what pins on the doors and CAS module are used.
Red power wire on the donor car I used disappeared somewhere under the fuse box.
I’m just going to tap into a power wire behind my fuse box.

[dumitru.o]

https://www.e90post.com/forums/showp...&postcount=205

[Kainy]

So that's probably where my confusion comes from. My car is a 2006 and I was looking at it's diagrams, while the donor car is a 2010, which means I shouldn't need the 2 extra red/yellow wires and just put the one from the module to the A4010 pin 10 on the glovebox fusebox.

However, I still can't figure out where exactly the two other wires go to, as from the diagram they should be ending up in the same A4010 plugs in the same fuse box, but another spot (X11007). My "working theory" was that the power wire goes to the driver's side, splits into three wires, two go for the doors and one to the fuse, but it makes little sense to route it like that

[dumitru.o]

that diagram covers all cars, depending on your prod year you pick one wire to follow.

how were you thinking you need to wire all three of them when clearly the other two are not matching your prod date?

[Kainy]

Originally Posted by dumitru.o

that diagram covers all cars, depending on your prod year you pick one wire to follow.

how were you thinking you need to wire all three of them when clearly the other two are not matching your prod date?

I was looking at the attached diagram (and one other I think) which interestingly enough showed only 1 wire for both pre-2007 and post. Like I said, I have no prior experience with reading bmw diagrams

The hole thing with looking through the wires is just for experience and to better understand what goes where. I know I could just cut the plugs and rebuild the wires, or just order the loom (from you), which is still not out of the question

One additional question (sorry I am still going through the whole thread) - as I understand I have no use for the CA key from that car or can I use it's CAS and mate it to my DME? Or the hassle is not worth it and I should just order a new key?

I am asking because I am thinking of taking the DME, too as it is the MSD81.

[dumitru.o]

if it s worth, that is a question i can t answer. if you take the key from another car you would better take everything keys + CAS+ DME and swap yours. If you only take the keys and start tampering your CAS in order to add these other keys.....then i don t know what to say, can t help you with that one. might work, might not

if i would take from another car, i would take everything or nothing. cloning key is not a good idea....

[Kainy]

Originally Posted by dumitru.o

if it s worth, that is a question i can t answer. if you take the key from another car you would better take everything keys + CAS+ DME and swap yours. If you only take the keys and start tampering your CAS in order to add these other keys.....then i don t know what to say, can t help you with that one. might work, might not

if i would take from another car, i would take everything or nothing. cloning key is not a good idea....

Cool, I'll try it then

[ResinThirteen]

Originally Posted by dumitru.o

if it s worth, that is a question i can t answer. if you take the key from another car you would better take everything keys + CAS+ DME and swap yours. If you only take the keys and start tampering your CAS in order to add these other keys.....then i don t know what to say, can t help you with that one. might work, might not

if i would take from another car, i would take everything or nothing. cloning key is not a good idea....

Sent you a PM and email about harness and fob for my 135!

Thanks!

[dumitru.o]

just replied to your PM and email

thanks

[GnomeChild]

Little bit of a thread jack here but... have any of the e90 guys taken the retrofit one step further and installed two additional CA handles for the rear doors? I have read of a few members doing so (or at least mentioning it in passing) but so far I haven't seen anyone mention how they've actually achieved it (wiring, coding, parts list, etc). I've looked everywhere for the passed 2 days and have given up sourcing data on my own and should just finally ask.

I figured I would probably have to tap the rear doors into the passenger harness so that none of them behave like the driver's door with the intermittent/2-step driver's lock feature enabled. I have factory CA (so that would probably simplify things significantly) and have verified I have all 3 CA antennae installed on the car.

A little off-topic to finish things off, but speaking of antennae, what is the function of the rear antenna/trunk CA? I always assumed it was "unlock trunk with 'kick' under the bumper" but that function has never worked the entire 5 years I've owned the car. Im seeing conflicting reports of people stating it is either the "kick" or the "one-touch open" trunk at the handle but nothing definitive. The "one-touch open" trunk has always worked for me: is that the extent of CA for the trunk or is there a "kick" function too?

[Serf27]

It was mentioned earlier I believe.
You tap into the the front driver and passenger door.
Thinking about it now, the left rear door would then unlock the left doors and not the right since it’s technically the driver door sending signal…?

I bought a kick sensor from Amazon. I need to wire it in.

[GnomeChild]

Originally Posted by Serf27

It was mentioned earlier I believe.
You tap into the the front driver and passenger door.

Ahhhh
I see, I suppose I did say I looked everywhere but it seems as though I looked everywhere except the most obvious place. Silly me

Thinking about it now, the left rear door would then unlock the left doors and not the right since it’s technically the driver door sending signal…?

This is why I specified I would probably pull the signal to the driver's rear door from the passenger CA wires since that would make it behave the most "OEM". I always have my driver's door set to unlock all doors but if for whatever reason I decided to change the setting I'd still want the CA to behave "correctly" like it does on the 5-Series+. It's gonna be a long wire, but worth it I hope

I bought a kick sensor from Amazon. I need to wire it in.

Ah, so then my suspicion is correct that the extent of CA Trunk is the only "one-touch open" function. Bummer, but since I have the CA system already installed I may just wire in a kick sensor myself. Shouldn't be too hard, yeah?

[Serf27]

I think it was mentioned here, ha. I mentioned using an e70 CA module and running the e90 rear handles to the additional pins on the e70 module, but another member said it wouldn’t work and… I can’t remember what exactly, but yea, just need to run wires from front handles to rear.

Running the front right handle to the the rears would be a good idea and make behave oem. I wonder if there is any downside to jumping 2 extra handles from one.
My e70 rears unlock all doors, as does the driver side, but only because I have the option set.
On my e90 where only I use it most of the time, only the drivers door unlocks.

I’m not sure what the trunk antenna is for. I remember seeing it being mentioned too.

The kick sensor has 4 wires.
Green, white, red, black.

I’m assuming this is how it goes.
Black chassis ground
Red 12v from fuse box
Green signal from trunk handle
White to trunk latch?

2 wires look to have 1 use fuses too. A wiring diagram for it would have been nice.

[blingers]

Originally Posted by GnomeChild

This is why I specified I would probably pull the signal to the driver's rear door from the passenger CA wires since that would make it behave the most "OEM". I always have my driver's door set to unlock all doors but if for whatever reason I decided to change the setting I'd still want the CA to behave "correctly" like it does on the 5-Series+. It's gonna be a long wire, but worth it I hope

You will need "passenger side" door handles to make it most OEM because the signal comes from the door handle itself, not the wire (so you can tap into the driver side wiring it doesn't matter). If your car is LHD you will need a RHD door handle (and vice versa) for your rear driver side.

[Serf27]

The handle would be upside if you put a right door handle on the left, wouldn’t it?

[GnomeChild]

Originally Posted by Serf27

The handle would be upside if you put a right door handle on the left, wouldn’t it?

No, he's saying to use a passenger handle from a RHD drive car so that it's still the left side handle but it is coded to send a "passenger" signal. If that's the case I'm glad I wasn't able to source a driver's side handle yet and probably have an hour or two ahead of me of scouring eBay UK. Hopefully the part numbers are different to make it easy on me but I have a feeling they might not be

[Serf27]

Originally Posted by GnomeChild

No, he's saying to use a passenger handle from a RHD drive car so that it's still the left side handle but it is coded to send a "passenger" signal. If that's the case I'm glad I wasn't able to source a driver's side handle yet and probably have an hour or two ahead of me of scouring eBay UK. Hopefully the part numbers are different to make it easy on me but I have a feeling they might not be

I see, well I guess this driver door handle I was going to use for the driver rear door is useless.

[GnomeChild]

Originally Posted by Serf27

I see, well I guess this driver door handle I was going to use for the driver rear door is useless.

Not necessarily. If you don't mind the driver's rear door only opening the left doors with the intermittent/2-step driver lock enabled; I suppose you could live it with. I take it most wouldn't be comfortable with that and would at least activate the "unlock-all" function to "mask" the quirky install. This is all assuming what blingers said about the programmed signals being correct and that the Driver's signal handles behave the way they do. Admittedly I don't have enough programming experience to verify or comment confirming or denying that's how the CA handle antennae function. At worst you could probably get at least a hundo in the classifieds or on eBay or just keep it as a spare if your front driver's handle ever breaks.

To be absolutely safe I will probably still source a "passenger" CA handle from a RHD car and maybe even still tap the driver's rear door into the passenger CA wiring. I still have reservations about running 3 handles off of 1 shared signal as it seems most members are just running the front and rears in parallel, thus at most have 2 handles tapped into a shared signal with good results reported. I'll probably extensively test the setup to iron out the kinks before making any final solders when I'm actually in the thick of it.

That being said, I reached out to dumitru.o to see if he possibly sources incomplete harnesses or has any damaged harnesses he could split some CA handle pigtails from to which he replied no. Luckily my local yard just dropped a CA equipped e91 about a week ago and I made my way out today:



Grabbed my pigtails and a few other harnesses while I was in there (planning on doing the rear puddle lights at the same time as the CA handles). The passenger door was stuck closed on the e91 and wouldn't open at the handles so I had to get creative (read: aggressive) when removing the door card to get access to the wiring. It also didn't help that some asshat stole my wire cutters right in the middle of the job while I was distracted with a different harness but the kindness of the other junkies pulled through that day and someone working on a car a few rows down lent me theirs for a few minutes, just long enough to get the job done. I also kept a shitload of that fuzzy electric tape BMW uses for their wiring for use later because who doesn't love when retrofits look like an OEM install?

All in all a pretty productive day. I probably only saved $20 and some headache versus just sourcing used pigtails on eBay but this way I ensured I got the longest pigtails possible. Plus it gave me something to do today and reminded me of all the times I would raid the yards every weekend back when I owned an e30. Oh, and also I'm out $10 after ordering some new wire cutters off Amazon since they were technically my dad's and I don't feel its fair to him that they were stolen in my possession but oh well, I can't predict assholes and he doesn't mind new tools haha

I think I have basically all I need to get started now besides my final handle.


EDIT:
Finally ended up doing that digging I promised to do before and to my surprise....

Originally Posted by GnomeChild

Hopefully the part numbers are different to make it easy on me but I have a feeling they might not be

RHD vehicles do in fact have different part numbers for their CA handles so that will probably make sourcing an appropriate passenger-signal-driver's-side handle a cakewalk. Currently here are no Space Grey RHD handles on eBay but I'm sure if I keep checking in every few days, I will find one. Since they seem to be much more rare that probably means I will have to shell out whatever premium someone decides to charge for it but I got my passenger handle so cheap ($40) I probably won't mind considering I was expecting to pay nearly $300 for this retrofit and it has the potential to hit $500 or more if you source parts new+paint

Most RHD handles seem to around $50-70 but shipping from UK is running them up to the $80-100 range. Still much more reasonable than what the LHD handles seem to be going for but you could get lucky like me and find a deal since there seems to be much more of a supply of the LHD handles. The UK represents a small fraction of the global population so I guess it only makes sense why more LHD handles would be available compared to RHD versions. For anyone who already did this install but has the quirky locking behavior I would assume the fix is just a handle swap away (considering the hard part of actually installing the retrofit has been completed). If that doesn't seem to fix it I would assume the next logical step is to wire the rear driver's door to the front passenger CA signal but then that would probably blow the whole assumed argument of LHD and RHD specific CA signals out of the water

Below are the listed parts numbers for the handles as well as the CA endcaps.

51217207563 (RHD Passenger handle)
51217207564 (Passenger Handle)
51217162433 (Driver's endcap)
51217162434 (Passenger's endcap)

It's pretty easy to source the endcaps in your paint code on eBay for a few bucks and many used handles may even just include them outright but I included the numbers anyway for posterity. Curiously enough the Driver's side endcap features a white interior housing, not black like the rest of them, and does not have the small magnet (or even a provision for one) inside that the other CA endcaps do. There doesn't seem to be a difference in LHD and RHD rear endcaps, they are all the same part numbers. At this point I'm fairly stumped on what the functional difference between CA endcaps and non-CA endcaps are alongside the magical mystery of what dastardly deeds those magnets are cooking up in there. Who knows at this point

[Serf27]

Luckily, my paint is white, so I don’t think I’ll have an issue.
What about this, the e70 uses the same handle.
Would using a left rear e70 handle work when tapped into passenger door handle on e90?

Is it possible to pull power and ground from the factory door harness on the rear doors for the handles? This would eliminate running additional wires and we could just tap into the signal wire from the module.