Hey guys, new to the BMW forums, but figured you guys might be able to give me some suggestions. Recently my 08 535xi had a random electrical fire. The fire coming from the adaptive headlight LCM control module (part number 9179186) the board is fried. If I buy a replacement via eBay or what not how difficult would it be for it to work? Do I send to a dealer? Or is it plug and play with a new vehicle?

 

You have to match the VIN.

 

Not terribly hard to write your VIN onto it if you are semi-electrically inclined. Just need the "Mike's Easy BMW Tools" download from th'innernet then use a K/DCAN cable with WinKFP to write the VIN to the module. There are many guides on several forums so you should be able to walk through it with relative ease.

Or you can take it to the dealer, but be prepared because if I understand correctly they don't just do one module - they will update them all which takes hours of billable time.

There are also several people who can remote into your computer (Teamviewer, etc) and do the work for you.

Up to you, but I'm assuming you're just now getting into E61s and not interested in cutting bigish checks to the dealer for work you can do yourself.

Andy