bruce_miranda

After many years of collecting parts I finally finished the passengers side mirror today. It took me 4 hours to do one mirror and I'll tell you why in a minute. I have never liked the way the M5 mirrors fold so I wanted to get the normal mirrors itself.

The installed mirrors were made up of the following bits.

1. Frame from a 2003 car with folding motor.
2. Light ring from a 2005 car.
3. Electronics from an 2008 M5 LCI car.
4. Mirror cover from my old 2006 car.
5. EC glass from a 2004 car.

Basically if you are thinking of transplanting the internals from a post Sep 05 to a pre Sep 05 frame - DONT. BMW changed the metal frame inside the mirror. I didn't notice this at first and landed up having to cut and file the metal frame to make the new ECU from the M5 mirror to sit. Every other bit was easy enough. Yes its possible but hard work and am not looking forward to doing the driver's side tomorrow.

You can very easily transplant stuff from a pre Sep 05 into a post Sep 05.

Remember everything can be moved over except the folding motor. So if you want to do this you MUST find a mirror with the motor in it.

My car just came with Heating and electrics. So to get this working as BMW intended I had to rewire the Body Control Module for the passenger's side, and supply power. There is no rewiring necessary for the driver's side at the KGM because everything is already there at the driver's switch panel.

Last step is coding, I added SA430 and SA563 to my FA list and recoded the KGM. Then amended the KGM file for the kerb side dipping and key comfort folding and your done.

So much for BMW's it can't be done nonsense.

BLooD

Congrats Bruce, to hell with BMW`s no it can`t be attitude

bruce_miranda

Newby question :
My puddle lights are now working as BMW intended but I've not figured out how they are meant to work. Prior to this I had wired the puddle lights of my mirrors in parallel with my door bottom lights and they worked a bit better.
How they are off when I would expect them to be ON and then suddenly if I click random buttons on my remote the lights come on.

I have a spare loom to light up the mirror puddle light if any one is interest. Also have the after market folding module if coding is not your thing.

d4rkchocolate

Well done buddy.........if theres anything u want me to do let me know, i'm in the middle of moving as i told ya before, so havnt had much chance modifying the idrive as yet....

530D Lee

Well done on the retrofit

Also loving my folding mirrors

bruce_miranda

Finished doing the Driver's side today and was done in about 2 hours this time. The driver's is easier because you don't need any rewiring of the KGM but I had to make a small harness for the mirror to extend the button panel input to the mirrors (for those who know me will know that till date I don't have a single wire cut or spliced on the car).

But now I have a problem and this is definitely a coding issue.

All my functions work but not as I require.

1. In reverse my Driver's side mirror moves.
2. With the switch on the Driver's side and when I move the mirror using the direction keys - the passenger side will move and vise versa.
3. When I adjust the vertical settings the mirror moves horizontally and vise versa.

But folding (both via button and key) and my puddle lights work.

I know Blood had this same issue but he had his car completely recoded by BMW and that solved this problem. And I don't want to hit CODE CAR in NCSExpert because it may mess up my CIC/Combox retrofit.

So does anyone who what other ECUs do I need to recode to get my mirrors working properly?

bruce_miranda

Found out what the problem is. I seem to have installed the wrong ECU inside the wrong mirror. Another day down to get this fixed.

BLooD

All sorted now bruce?

bruce_miranda

All sorted only in that I think I know what the problem is. Seems like I'm going to have to swap the mirror ECUs. Not looking forward to that.

What I don't understand is that you had a similar issue but you managed to solve that by BMW recoding the car. But why did you have the same problem when you didn't dismantle the mirrors and your mirrors were from a UK car anyway so should have been coded correctly to begin with. The last thing I need is to swap the ECUs and still have the problem.

The only reason I think I know what the problem is because when I change the KGM parameter to make it LHD instead of RHD then everything works as it should, except ofcourse the driver's mirror dips down on reverse. But I didn't want to leave the coding that way because I didn't understand the implications of coding a module as LHD on a RHD drive.