After much searching, maybe I've finally landed in the right spot.

I have a 2010 mini with a new aftermarket amp, and have found, after a trip to the dealer, that the car is now putting out fault codes because the amp is missing.

Anyone in the Cincinnati area or within a couple hundred miles that has time to assist? (For a proper fee, of course)

Otherwise, where to look to get this done?

 

If you cannot find someone to do this and you need to do it yourself.

You will want to remove the HK amp option code from the Vehicle Order string in both the FRM and CAS module. Then "default" the head unit. That should set the car straight for the dealer software.

 

Thanks for your message. The concept of doing it myself seems alien and strange. Not familiar with how to access the FRM and CAS module, and in fact don't even know what they are.

I design websites, can build a workstation with my eyes closed, but auto software is a foreign concept to me.

Is this something easily done, to learn how to do? Special equipment needed? Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

Just occurred to me, I can contact some local BMW/cooper repair shops (non-dealers) and see what they might know/what they can do.

 

It is a pretty challenging setup...look under the stickies for NCS Expert for Beginners.

I doubt most shops will try this, as their software setup will be dealer-style. And they can't modify the Vehicle Order. Dealers can't even, they need to get Germany to send them updated VO strings!

 

It's very straightforward. Follow the guide to the letter and you'll be fine

 

I have read through the first pages of NCS guides for beginners, and re-coding appears to be anything but straigtforward or simple. Warnings abound for people that do not know what they are doing, as well as reports of incidents of people messing up their cars.

Since I have no clue what a RAR file is, and the guides say to avoid this exercise if you do not know what it is, I will not dive in.

Coding with NCS expert might be simple and straightforward if I knew what I was doing, and I do not.

I would love to have the knowledge and ability to fool around with the code in the car, but I do not have the time or money to fix things I might break.

Thanks for your input everyone.

If anyone in Cincinnati or nearby can help me out, I'll drive a reasonable distance to hook up with you and pay you for your time.

In the meantime I have an appt in two days with the audio installer who will attempt to reinstall the HK amp so it will communicate with the car. I would prefer to re-code the car if it were a simple affair, but it does not seem to be.

The installers are arrogant and defensive and I absolutely hate dealing with them. If they were as amazing as they think they are they would have listened to me when I told them the original amp should stay installed to communicate with the car.

 

Well if you aren't comfortable with it then you probably are best staying away

 

Jeff, you may find it easier simply to drop the stock amp back in place and leave it partially wired in. With no input signal it's not going to draw much power, and the car will be happier that way.

Coding is indeed not for the faint of heart; with that said there are a number of forum members both here and on other forums (e92post, bmwcoders, etc.) that offer coding services either free of charge or for very reasonable rates.

Last time I was having issues I was contacted by the member TRIPLE_O here, who offers remote coding help. I didn't take them up on the offer (I more or less managed to sort myself out), but it may be worth your while looking around a bit.

 

DrZ, I have come to the same conlcusion, thanks for confirming.

Strobeyprobey has given me some guidance and I'm going with reinstalling the amp.

I did make friends at BluegrassMini forum and a very nice guy was going to re-code my car for me in Lexington (no charge) but with strobey's advice I see it's wiser to just reinstall the amp. At first I didn't understand the thing with the 100hz rolloff, and see that as a major issue, so I'm skipping the recoding, long story short.