2010 328i M Sport // Build Thread

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:

Install new FRM module in the footwell
Flash the car to accept a newer FRM3 from the previous FMR2 module via WinKPF
Read the VIN/car data from the CAS via NCSExpert
Write the VIN/car data from the CAS to the new FRM3 module
Revert some weird settings the previous FRM3 owner had via BimmerCode app
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

m42b32

pynacl said:

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

Ah ok that makes more sense, I forgot they had hosted those.

YoungCR

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...

I hadn’t heard about it either but it’s not the only place those resources were available either, just the most public.

pynacl

Ive put a 1000 trouble free miles on it. Seems like the new battery and new FRM fixed this cars woes. These E90s are really great - cheap, easy to work on, fun to drive 6MT, okay to get a little banged up by two goldens.

pynacl

I really wanted to find a saddle brown or coral red interior to swap into the E90, but there were some limitations I learned:

- needs be from an LCI car due to the additional headrest restraint system

- needs to be sport with the thigh rest

I searched locally for the better part of a year and turned up empty handed. So I opted to do the insane thing and buy a second E90 with all the parts I wanted, and did the swap. The one big challenge here is that my seats are manual bases, which I wanted to keep. Turns out the only way to do this is to strip the seats down to the bare frame and swap the foam, leather, electronics over. Overall was an absolute pain in the ass, but worth it I think.

With the swap I also got heated seats, rear split folding seats (which I did not have before!) rear door sunshades, and a power sunshade rear deck out of it.

Donor car: