RDU shop for E90 BMW battery reset witchcraft?

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:17 pm

Karl,

I have Autoenginuity which will do the battery registration...no charge to come by and reset when you're ready, should take 5 seconds after the thing connects up to OBD-II port which takes maybe a minute or so. You don't have to do it immediately upon replacing the battery, but should probably get it done within a reasonable time. I've done it on my wife's E90 last year when I put in a new battery (which btw, is a royal pain in the tail with all the crap connectors and stuff on top of the battery...it just takes a while for what used to be a simple two connection job).

James, no it's not an E46 thing. E60 and newer BMWs have this "feature" as they have adaptive battery charging which supposedly extends battery life when in reality it's probably just a value-add feature for BMW service shops.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:19 pm

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

Karl,

I have Autoenginuity which will do the battery registration...no charge to come by and reset when you're ready, should take 5 seconds after the thing connects up to OBD-II port which takes maybe a minute or so. You don't have to do it immediately upon replacing the battery, but should probably get it done within a reasonable time. I've done it on my wife's E90 last year when I put in a new battery (which btw, is a royal pain in the tail with all the crap connectors and stuff on top of the battery...it just takes a while for what used to be a simple two connection job).

James, no it's not an E46 thing. E60 and newer BMWs have this "feature" as they have adaptive battery charging which supposedly extends battery life when in reality it's probably just a value-add feature for BMW service shops.

Yeah, I think I'd rather the 3% reduced battery life and no special tool to swap a battery

.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:20 pm

JamesShort wrote:

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

Karl,

I have Autoenginuity which will do the battery registration...no charge to come by and reset when you're ready, should take 5 seconds after the thing connects up to OBD-II port which takes maybe a minute or so. You don't have to do it immediately upon replacing the battery, but should probably get it done within a reasonable time. I've done it on my wife's E90 last year when I put in a new battery (which btw, is a royal pain in the tail with all the crap connectors and stuff on top of the battery...it just takes a while for what used to be a simple two connection job).

James, no it's not an E46 thing. E60 and newer BMWs have this "feature" as they have adaptive battery charging which supposedly extends battery life when in reality it's probably just a value-add feature for BMW service shops.

Yeah, I think I'd rather the 3% reduced battery life and no special tool to swap a battery

.

No kidding. Of course I felt the same way when fuel injection started appearing in cars...

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:23 pm

At least fuel injection lead to 400hp cars that get 30mpg.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:19 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

At least fuel injection lead to 400hp cars that get 30mpg.

Absolutely. It's beyond amazing what has been accomplished, and early fuel injection methods look more archaic than carbs at this point (i.e. Bosch K-jet, L-jet).

Michael Westerfield · **Posted:** Mon Jun 24, 2013 10:23 pm

Aaron Buckley wrote:

Scott Johnson wrote:

Is the old one dead or just failing (does the ECM need to be reset yet). Seems you could just make sure the car always sees 12V during the swap. I've done it before, jumper cables from old battery connections to new battery, remove old battery, carefully place new battery and connect terminals. No loss of radio stations, etc. I'm sure there are less cumbersome ways then using jumper cables.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5rwnMuZVbk

In this case though it's trying to determine how to charge the battery based upon the "learning" of the ECU. So as his original battery dies, it gives it more volts than say a "healthy" battery. When the new battery goes in, the charging process wouldn't be good for the healthy battery and it kills it with too much juice. The "reset" tells the ECU it's a new battery and starts the monitoring process from scratch. -AB

After working with lead acid batteries for almost 10 years I can only shake my head in disbelief. There is nothing fancy to do when charging one. Another case of Hans bending you over.

...and I had almost changed my mind about giving BMWs.

Aaron Buckley · **Posted:** Tue Jun 25, 2013 8:56 am

Michael Westerfield wrote:

After working with lead acid batteries for almost 10 years I can only shake my head in disbelief. There is nothing fancy to do when charging one. Another case of Hans bending you over.

...and I had almost changed my mind about giving BMWs.

I don't doubt this, but when you read post after post of people not having this reset and their new battery failing very early, you have to wonder what those propellerheads are doing with the charging cycles. - AB

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Tue Jun 25, 2013 5:22 pm

Black Forest Industries to the rescue. :mrgreen:

Not only did they get me the battery the same day, they put it in the same day. I imagine there was a THSCC discount involved, but the total damage was just over $215. I'd never heard of World Source One batteries, but now know that they come from Worldpac, and are USA made. The car starts MUCH more quickly now.

After I left BFI, I needed to put in some gas, and immediately after that, one of the countless service icons showed up on the gauge cluster. I called BFI on my way there. The tech came out and took me through what the icon was for - it was just a time-based thing which had come due by chance on the day I got the battery replaced. He reset the inspection service date thing, and told me he'd given the car a quick look over. He also passed a remark about having been a dealer BMW tech. It later occurred to me that he was doing this after closing time.

So, yeah. The guys at BFI pretty much kick ass. They were fast, friendly, thorough, and inexpensive. The next time my wife's 328i needs something that's out of my reach, they'll get the call.

BTW - Import Motor Works returned my call while I was waiting on BFI to finish the work. They quoted me over $300 with them providing the battery, an Interstate, which the woman told me via voicemail was "a really really good battery." It better be. Had I brought them a car with a battery already in place, the price for registration was under $50.00. Which is reasonable.

Aaron Buckley wrote:

Michael Westerfield wrote:

After working with lead acid batteries for almost 10 years I can only shake my head in disbelief. There is nothing fancy to do when charging one. Another case of Hans bending you over.

...and I had almost changed my mind about giving BMWs.

I don't doubt this, but when you read post after post of people not having this reset and their new battery failing very early, you have to wonder what those propellerheads are doing with the charging cycles. - AB

I wondered if maybe it's some kind of fuel efficiency trick?

steve remchak · **Posted:** Tue Jun 25, 2013 10:57 pm

While patience is a virtue......extreme patience is a BMW thing............

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Wed Jun 26, 2013 8:03 am

That's a good deal Karl. Having done the replacement myself, it's a time consuming process only because of its location (way down in the lower right rear of the trunk area, which btw is an outstanding location in terms of weight distribution) and the trunk panels and unusual mess of connectors/cables all attached to top of the thing. If you consider buying the battery, going home, doing the swap, taking the used battery back, you're looking at 1.5-2 hours, oh and you need to heft that sucker out of that little hole it's nestled down in...not a fun task and somewhat of a back-breaker.

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

So BMW looked at the Kappa twins (Solstice/Sky) and said to themselves, "we can make it more of a pain in the ass"?

http://www.solsticeforum.com/forum/atta ... show36.jpg

JohnByers · **Posted:** Wed Jun 26, 2013 10:16 am

Ask certain Mopar owners who have to take off the front drivers wheel to replace theirs :twisted:

Karl Shultz · **Posted:** Wed Jun 26, 2013 11:02 am

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

That's a good deal Karl.

Yeah, I was really quite happy. I also didn't have to d!ck around with paying a core charge, keeping a receipt, inevitably losing the receipt. All to come home to discover that whichever of the 50 forum threads I happened to read suggested the wrong size battery. :lol:

The part about taking the car apart, though, that kind of thing doesn't bother me as much as it used to. After the Mercedes project of the last few weeks, the BMW battery removal process looked like a vacation:

stripped by krshultz, on Flickr

But yeah, there's a fair amount of "stuff" on top of that battery. The price of progress, I guess.

As an aside - I detailed a friend of mine's E60 M6 a couple of months ago. It had so many electronic gizmos whirring and popping while I worked that, by the end of the weekend, we had to jump it to get it started.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Wed Jun 26, 2013 12:48 pm

Hey, looking good! I guess it's almost time for paint. I need to do the same thing to my old Volvo.

RobLupella · **Posted:** Wed Jun 26, 2013 1:03 pm

All cars are becoming a PITA now. To replace the headlight bulb in our Mazda6 requires arm movements that humans can't do. Hmmmm that reminds me that I should replace them now while the engine is out of the car......

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RDU shop for E90 BMW battery reset witchcraft?

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