yul m6

In an effort to level the playing field between dealerships and independent repair shops, EPA mandated that all cars built after 2004 should meet specification J2534-1 for diagnosis and reflashing. This means that third party tools ( known as pass thru tools) costing about 1000$ that meet the specification can be used coupled with an internet connection to BMW's technical site www.bmwtechinfo.com ( 30$/day 200$/month subscription cost) and presto you have access to all the cars electronics that the dealer has, including flashing with the latest progman and retrofitting new accessories.

I purchased a PTT from I-M Actia, as it is supported by BMW, and after spending half a day downloading and installing drivers from BMW and Actia, I finally have a working system and can access the car with two different programs, WebDIS for diagnosis and PROGMAN for programming. I have stopped at this point because the car has to be connected to a power supply charger to maintain a constant voltage at the battery, otherwise there is risk of destroying the ecu's. My current charger is not powerfull enough, so I ordered an 800 Watt Deutronic charger / power supply ( the same one used at the dealers), and will actually try diagnosis and programming when I receive it next week.

My total cost is 2600$, 1300$ each for the PTT and the battery charger. I know that the charger is very expensive, but it is the only one approved by BMW and I don't want to take any chances.

I am a retired computer engineer with a BS in electrical engineering, and am on very good terms with the guy doing programming at my dealer, so I can get answers to my questions there and yet I do not feel 100% when working on the car. Please do not try this if you are not really sure you know what you are doing, the results can be very costly.

my530i

This is a great news for us to avoid depending on dealers after warranty. As far as I know, none of E60 member here dare not even think about programming his/her E60 at home. If it's trivial, I'd spend some money on the tool, too. However, the most dangerous thing is during programming and something goes wrong, we might fry our car electronics. Let's say we just fry the TCU, it's would cost a few hundred bucks.
Also, we need to have a full support by BMW NA in NJ in case we need something like Vehicle Order, or some engineers tech support. If we screwed, we cannot do anything except bringing car to dealer for them to fix.

However, I'm sure that making Progman available to public will bring tremendous about of risk to BMW during warranty period.

I'm very interested to hear from you regarding programming E60 at home, and I'm willing to learn it. Please keep us posted. You're such a pioneer!

yul m6

I played some more this afternoon, but with my wife's 328xi, as my M5 is going to the dealer next week, to be replaced by 2007 M6, and now is not the time to send it on a flat bed. Everything is working fine i.e. the two programs ( both PROGMAN and DIS) are loading and ready, and I can go through the menus after I did some tinkering with IE and MSJava machine setting. I was able to do a quick diagnostic before my 24 hr subscription expired. I was also able to D/L the vehicule order, one less thing to have to get from BMW. I will not renew my subscription now until I receive the charger, power supply, as the temptation to play around with my 12 amp charger is too great.

I received a PM from a member who I assume is affiliated with BMW in Munich. Out of respect for the privacy of PM's I will not disclose his remarks. If he wants to add to this thread he is most welcome.

I would like to stress what I said in my O/P, any mistake when playing with this gadget can be very expensive, and the warranty might not cover it.

My take is that BMW had to make this available very reluctantly to comply with US regulations, their biggest market. I am sure if Khazakhastan was the only country with such a regulation, then BMW would have ignored it completely. No disrespect meant to Borat.

my530i

Great! So we need to be educated here. If you want to create an E60 vehicle order to have LED tail lamp and mirror folding function, does your program can do that? Meaning can vehicle order be done at dealer or it has to be done at BMW NA in NJ?

RootKit

Thank you for the post! Very interesting to see someone taking some serious steps and experimenting with it. Since my car is out of warranty, I was always curious how much cost to get the necessary equipments to program the car. That is not even including the knowledge of how to do it. Now i know it is possible to begin with and like you say requires effort & money and more money if things go haywire.

It seems like cars manufacture nowadays have their own computers and ways of diagnosing everything. If things go wrong(out of warranty) we are forced to go back to the dealers that charge us an arm and a leg for the programming diagnostic. Just to reset an annoying oil change maintenance message will cost us a few hundred dollars. :thumbsdown: Obviously, it is good for consumers but bad for car manufacture dealers when they allow third party to penetrate their market.

Just like my530i says...i would assume the programming would allow the possibilities of doing many things?

nicke60gre

Great news. Keep us posted!! Good luck on your project

firestorm

Hello YUL_M6
any progress on diy progman update ?

thanks

Bteljuice

1