2010 328i M Sport // Build Thread

[pynacl]

YoungCR said:

Holy cow!

Right?! By the sound of it I was surprised it didn't shoot right through the floor lol. I immediately pulled over, shut the car off and crawled under expecting oil to be everywhere. I suppose this is better than if it hit the oil pan or trans huh!

[patsbimmer1]

Other than you knowing it's there that shouldn't hurt anything.

[GunMetalGrey]

pynacl said:

Little update after taking off the plastic under-tray. Seems as if the item in the road actually hit the center support so hard it bent it INTO the front subframe, denting it. Doesn't seem to have bent it or thrown anything out of alignment, but I'm certainly no expert. Anyone have any advice or insight on the severity of a hit like this?

A solid smack! 

You should be fine, I'd just glance there in say 6 months to make sure it isn't wearing against it / wearing a hole through it.

[pynacl]

patsbimmer1 said:

Other than you knowing it's there that shouldn't hurt anything.  

GunMetalGrey said:

A solid smack! 

You should be fine, I'd just glance there in say 6 months to make sure it isn't wearing against it / wearing a hole through it. 

Always a bit spooky when alum parts get hit that hard! I appreciate the insight guys, just going to replace the steel center brace and under tray and call it a day

[pynacl]

pynacl said:

Time to tackle the big chungus of N52 oil leaks. Could BMW have achieved the 50/50 weight distribution without putting the pan directly above the subframe/steering rack? Of course not! It was a fairly minor leak and the under tray caught all of it, but just don't want it leaking on my driveway. Luckily the car had the valve cover, spark plug tube seals, both eccentric shaft seals and oil filter housing gaskets replaced in the last 7k miles. Feels worth it to button up the last of the oil leak possibilities.

Little before and after of the oil pan gasket and hardware replacement. Nice to no longer piss oil everywhere 

[pynacl]

Got the new under tray tossed on. Definitely a shame TMS doesn’t make an aluminum skid plate for the M Sport trim. Figured I’d toss this on until I find a better replacement

[GunMetalGrey]

A fresh undertray after fixing the oil leaks has to feel wonderful!

[pynacl]

GunMetalGrey said:

A fresh undertray after fixing the oil leaks has to feel wonderful!

Like a clean pair of underwear after trusting a fart

[pynacl]

Update - it is now a barn find. Think I can register it as "chalk gray"?

[KaiserRolls]

Sell it to me

[pynacl]

KaiserRolls said:

Sell it to me 

Ah see but then I'd have to officially take the loss of overpaying for the car! Only half joking but, I really do love this thing. It's in storage since it felt wrong to expose it to it's first winter when I have that extra parts bin of an M3 I've been driving

[pynacl]

I drove the E90 on and off through the past couple years virtually without issue... until recently. It developed a rare issue where the car would completely lose power after turning it off. A single jump start would fix it, and it would run fine again for several months. It was like it was bridging the gap of a shitty connection somewhere. I didn't think much of it, but it ended up killing the cars electronic footwell module. This ECU is supposedly very susceptible to voltage spikes killing it. Sadly this thing controls headlights, blinkers, central locking system, windows, amongst a ton of other critical stuff. I tried replacing the FRM with a used one and coding it to the car, which did work for 24hrs. Sadly, for god knows what reason, that one shit the bed too. I sent off the original FRM to an ECU repair shop, to which they pinged me today saying they could not figure out what is wrong with it. So the car sits for now

[pynacl]

I will note the car does run and drive fine, but since I cannot roll the windows down for taco bell drive-thru what is the point

[Jdesign]

Sounds like a super annoying issue. I would get a voltmeter and see if you can find the OEM voltage inputs and outputs and test for variations. Ive been there, voltage issues are a pain.

[patsbimmer1]

Have you checked the ground strap under the car going from engine to frame?

[pynacl]

Jdesign said:

Sounds like a super annoying issue. I would get a voltmeter and see if you can find the OEM voltage inputs and outputs and test for variations. Ive been there, voltage issues are a pain. 

After some testing I did find that the original source of the electrical issue was stemming from a faulty battery - I think from improper winter storage which was my fault. It was a 2022 date stamp so I was pretty surprised! Sadly since I was too lazy to test/fix this sooner, it fried the footwell module

patsbimmer1 said:

Have you checked the ground strap under the car going from engine to frame?

I didn't think to check the ground strap, but after an absurd amount of testing I did figure it out finally. In the end it was more difficult to fix the damage caused by the faulty battery than it was to fix the original issue. That's what I get for being lazy!

[pynacl]

After a few weeks of research, forum perusing, and tinkering I finally fixed the electrical problems with the E90. I believe this all stemmed from the battery. 2 years ago I replaced the battery with a factory equivalent 90ah AGM unit. I forgot to use a coding tool to tell the car it was an AGM battery, and according to some stuff I've read the power output of the two types is slightly different. Without the coding, it can cause subtle voltage spikes to flow through the car's various ECUs. Long story short, through forgetting to code it and harsh winter storage, that battery caused quite the issues, namely frying my front footwell module.

Some symptoms of a failed FRM are: no power windows, no central locking system, headlights permanently on, no interior lights, no 6MT hill assist, no blinkers, amongst a very illuminated dash, and a host of other issues.

To fix it I had to buy a replacement FRM and go scouring the internet for the coding tools. If you didn't know, Bimmergeeks, who used to host the resources was hit with a cease and desist from BMW NA and removed access to things like Inpa, WinKPF, NCSExpert, along with all the sp-daten files for all the different chassis. After days of digging / testing I got my laptop setup and coded a new FRM - surprisingly it all worked like a charm! Aside from the fact the FRM came from an E9X M3 and the previous owner (who I can only imagine has dog shit for brains) had coded it to turn on the high beams when the headlight switch was set to off (position 2) - this literally took me weeks of wire tracing and headaches only to figure out it was coded that way...

Edit: I did also send the original FRM off to an ECU repair shop, but they deemed it "un-salvageable" and could not find the issue.

The steps were:

1. Install new FRM module in the footwell
2. Flash the car to accept a newer FRM3 from the previous FMR2 module via WinKPF
3. Read the VIN/car data from the CAS via NCSExpert
4. Write the VIN/car data from the CAS to the new FRM3 module
5. Revert some weird settings the previous FRM3 owner had via BimmerCode app
6. Clear all faults and verify VIN matches between CAS and FRM via Inpa

Here is the car with a sweet sweet error free dash and fully working!

[m42b32]

pynacl said:

If you didn't know, Bimmergeeks, who used to host the resources was hit with a cease and desist from BMW NA and removed access to things like Inpa, WinKPF, NCSExpert, along with all the sp-daten files for all the different chassis.

This is the first I'm hearing of it, has it basically made protool useless? I still use it for fixing things on my wife's Mini so it would suck to have the diagnostic functionality gone...

[Jdesign]

pynacl said:

Aside from the fact the FRM came from an E9X M3 and the previous owner (who I can only imagine has dog shit for brains) had coded it to turn on the high beams when the headlight switch was set to off (position 2) - this literally took me weeks of wire tracing and headaches only to figure out it was coded that way...

I chuckled at this, but also thought of reasons it may have been that way (possibly aftermarket headlights wired incorrectly or halos wired as high beams). All in all I'm glad you got it sorted!

[pynacl]

m42b32 said:

This is the first I'm hearing of it, has it basically made protool useless? I still use it for fixing things on my wife's Mini so it would suck to have the diagnostic functionality gone...

My understanding is the legal actions only impacted them hosting their "Standard Tools" package - aka Inpa, NCSExpert, WinKPF for those folks that like to do it raw. I don't think it impacted their ProTool because that is using closed-sourced, proprietary software. Although I would put money on them using parts of the BMW IP code in their product. Looks like they still sell it and support it though