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BMW 3-Series (E90 E92) Forum > BMW E90/E92/E93 3-series General Forums > Regional Forums > UK > UK Technical Forum > INPA and general advice



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      06-10-2022, 04:39 PM   #1
F31 to E91
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INPA and general advice

Hi all,

New to the site, having recently sold my F31 320d and moved up to an E91 330d.

I am in love! My 320d was one of the best cars I'd ever had and the only car I'd ever missed after selling. Until I bought the 330d! From being able to adjust the sensitivity of the auto wipers to the addictive wave of torque when you put your foot down, I soon forgot all about the F31!

Anyway, onto the gist of my post, the car I've bought was a bargain, finished in stunning arktis metallic and featuring a nice scar running from front wing to rear quarter, it was clear there were some jobs needing doing!

The rear hatch does not work,
The rear wiper the same,
The panoramic roof is completely non responsive!
The aftermarket xenons keep throwing a fault (or it may be another light)
The headlight washers stay popped out a bit

I've got a laptop and cable for INPA and downloaded the bimmergeeks suite of software. I'm quite handy with a computer and am keen to dive in and look at the car in depth and see what I can sort out and eventually start to retrofit options the car is missing! I'm also looking (in vain) for a pdf workshop manual

Anyone got any ideas about a common reason for any of the above faults?

Anyone want to give me a quick rundown of what I can do with the bimmergeeka stuff to look into the car and work towards coding the FRM to sort out the light fault?

Thanks for reading

Jim
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      06-11-2022, 01:44 AM   #2
therealdb1
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Welcome.
Most folk go from an E to an F not vice versa but each to their own.
Regarding the headlamps the operative word is "aftermarket".
BMW's hate non-OEM sensors and lights. They even spit out LED bulbs very often.
Any idea who manufactured your lights and someone may be able to give you a work around or you may end up having to get some pre-owned genuine ones.
The rest of your issues just sound like typical mechanical or electrical gremlins you get with second hand cars that need a bit of time and thought thrown at them to resolve.
You have to remember that even the youngest E9x's are 10 years old now so are bound to have a few niggles even if they look pristine. When I first started driving a 10 to 16 year old car was pretty much shagged and just a few miles from the scrap yard. How times, and the quality of our cars, has changed!
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      06-11-2022, 07:37 AM   #3
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Thanks for the reply.

I would imagine that in the current economic climate many people are downgrading their cars, maybe they aren't all as enthusiastic as me?

TBH I was more looking for ideas about the causes of the faults rather than a lesson in older cars. I've had many an old car and I'm not complaining about unreliability! I was hoping that somebody may be able to point me in a direction of where a fault may lie that causes some of my issues. In fact being fair to older cars, none of them I've owned had as many faults as this, which is why I was wondering if a single cause may be the reason for multiple faults! I was hoping that considering a lot of the faults are in the same geographic area that a common cause could be the culprit?

Re the xenons, I had assumed that the "new" headlights were xenon as surely nobody would be so tasteless as to change for another set of halogens with an awful DRL would they??? Turns out they were so I'm going to ignore the lights for now and focus on the inoperable sunroof etc! Once I'm satisfied that all faults that I can fix are fixed, I'll get some factory bixenons and retrofit.

Essentially I want to scan the car to see the current state of play. Then I want to work on fixing any genuine faults to ensure the car is happy before embarking on some retrofitting goodness! However, none of the tutorials I've found have helped, they have all been very specific for a certain job and not just the scanning of a new to me car to see whats what. This bit might be something better done with a generic code reader but I dont really want to buy anything more as I already have a laptop and suite of software that by my understanding can do all a code reader can and more!
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      06-13-2022, 12:20 PM   #4
SRLA
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I don't have experience with an e91 330d in particular but for what it's worth some general points on e90s:

INPA is a very poweful low level tool but not user friendly at all (also because it's mostly in German), for common tasks you can use ISTA which is much more straightforward.

Don't know about the hatch or roof but I'd follow typical electrics fault finding procedure: check the fuse, check the relay, check the switch, check continuity and ground, if those all check out it's probably the motor/lock.

Rear wipers are a common E series fault, it's probably moisture in the motor seizing it up and you might be able to get it working by striping and cleaning it, if not new motor.

Headlight washers also a common fault, they get stiff or the spring inside gets weak, you can try some WD40 but most likely you'll just need new ones too.

Also as above BMW don't like aftermarket bulbs. Often even a tiny bit of corrosion on a contact is enough to throw an error even with OEM bulbs. I'd start by simply getting new original bulbs, if that doesn't clear the error (but the bulbs to work) honesty I'd forget about it it's probably not worth the hassle of checking the harness.

Last edited by SRLA; 06-13-2022 at 12:26 PM..
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      07-01-2022, 10:19 AM   #5
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Thank you for your rpely.

Apologies for the delay in getting back to the thread but it's been madness, laptop for this is stuck at 100% disk usage and while Im trying to sort that out we lost 2 pets in 10 days so my car has been on the back burner for a bit.

ISTA sounds interesting, is there a decent guide on how to find it as so far all I've found is a paid for site that I probably wont need for anything else!

I'll try popping the wiper motor apart this weekend or next and see if I cen free things up.

was going to tackle a couple of dents today but have been scuppered by lack of wheelbolt removal, I'm 2 breaker bars down so far and only removed one!
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      07-03-2022, 02:21 AM   #6
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Sorry to hear about your pets.

There were some torrents around for ISTA but it's hard to find because it's massive, it's about a 20GB package and over 50GB installed. It's also stupid slow, you may want to get a laptop with an SSD for it.

I can't send it over to you because of its size but if you're anywhere near South Wales and got a USB pen drive I can copy it for you.
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      07-03-2022, 03:38 AM   #7
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The rear wiper issue could be broken wires in the tailgate hinge. Common problem in e91, probably the same for the rear hatch issue. There are plenty of threads about it on here. The sunroof will possibly have broken guides (another common issue and a real pain in the arse to repair) have sent you pm regarding ISTA
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