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I have an 05 R52S and love my little car named "Tiny" by my 7 yr old son. I have had it for about 6 months now and been sorting through a few things and I wanted to see if I could gain any insight and help from this groups as this collective is much smarter than I am! I have a few things that don't work and I am wanting to figure out what if any of these might be interconnected so I can maybe just maybe fix a few things along the way so currently the things that are not working are 1. rear window defrost 2. radio (powers on but says disabled) 3. air bag light on roof console says off and airbag light on dash is on (my scanner will not connect to the module at all in my car but will in others) 4. top (by this I have no power to it at all no sun roof section no lights on the switch what so ever and again my scanner can not connect to it) So my question is there any thing that would connect to all these things like maybe the BCM that maybe could be the root cause. I spent forever looking over radio fixes online and never came up with a good solution. I would really like to have some ideas before I take it to the stealership and pay more than I paid for the car. So any suggestions are welcome about all or any of my little annoyances!
And yes it sucks having aR52 that the tops doesn't work in!
Welcome to the wonderful world of (almost) topless motoring.
There are two button switches that limit top operation. One is under the cargo tray foot and the other on the upper driver's side where the boot door closes against the frame. Either one not completely being engaged will stop the top. I use a small chair leg stick on pad on the boot door to make sure that switch gets pushed in, it is a very short throw switch.
To quote an old member of the forum: "Pictures, dammit, pictures. Without pictures, it didn't happen."
Avoid the 'stealership' at all costs, ask other MINI folk around there and/or check out this page for possible indie shops in your area. https://www.minirepairshops.com
Welcome to the wonderful world of (almost) topless motoring.
There are two button switches that limit top operation. One is under the cargo tray foot and the other on the upper driver's side where the boot door closes against the frame. Either one not completely being engaged will stop the top. I use a small chair leg stick on pad on the boot door to make sure that switch gets pushed in, it is a very short throw switch.
To quote an old member of the forum: "Pictures, dammit, pictures. Without pictures, it didn't happen."
Avoid the 'stealership' at all costs, ask other MINI folk around there and/or check out this page for possible indie shops in your area. https://www.minirepairshops.com
Thanks for the reply about the switches. I have looked at those but it is my understanding that even with those not "switched" that either you should have a flashing red light at the switch or the sunroof area should work. I have neither :(
also thank you for the list of shops and I will use that for sure!
under the front passenger seat on my 06 R52 is the can-bus connections....I found them corroded and broken off when I pulled the seat and carpet. Once i striped all the wires and soldered them all back together, lots of items started working in my car again.....I'm not saying that this is your problem, but it was on mine....might be worth taking a look...my carpet was really wet when I got the car
Awesome this is exactly what kinds of things I am looking for. A suspect spot! I have seen this mentioned once before in some research about the radio so I will look into it! Looks like you removed all your carpet to get to this how big a job is that and any reason this shouldn't be accessible by folding back just the passenger side with the seat out? I don't want to tear out more than I have to just to inspect!
Common for amp to die, passenger seat airbag sensor to fail (there is a recall for it), and top to stop working so they may be independent. Hopefully it is a common issue, but there can easily be more than one issue.
I'm guessing these are independent issues. I do know from experience that If you take the seat out without remembering to first disconnecting the battery that will trigger the airbag warning light, and to reset that you need a more advanced scanner than the usual cheap ones to reset the SRS module or whatever its called.
I'm guessing these are independent issues. I do know from experience that If you take the seat out without remembering to first disconnecting the battery that will trigger the airbag warning light, and to reset that you need a more advanced scanner than the usual cheap ones to reset the SRS module or whatever its called.
as long as you don't turn the key on, you won't have any issues with the seats being out of the car...you don't have to disconnect the battery
as long as you don't turn the key on, you won't have any issues with the seats being out of the car...you don't have to disconnect the battery
ok awesome this might not be too bad to get a quick look at. I will most likely though wait until I have some warmer weather and not calling for snow on the weekend!
Thanks! I will report back what I find either way. At this point i will take anything back working I can get. For instance I think my car has the back up sensors on the spec sheet but I have no indication they don't work so I assumed I didn't have that option so one more thing on the list! lol
If you have the four little round buttons in your back bumper, you have the parking distance sensor option...actually, from what I have found out, the parking distance control unit was standard on the convertible cars, mainly because you can't see squat out the back of the car while backing up
My sensors didn't work either when I got my R52.....actually, not much of anything worked. Once I got those K-bus wires fixed, the sensors started working, (scared the hell outta me when they came on), other items started working as well...even the navigation system came on in the dash every time. Those wires that I showed you allow all the computers and modules to talk with each other and allows the items that you want to turn on work as they should
If you have a few minutes, or maybe more....grab something to drink, maybe a cookie or two, and read through this thread that I made for my car.....once you get done reading, now you will know why I named the car, "Mini from Hell"
I also found that my driver door wicks water into the driver side floor during heavy rain - seems the rubber seal below the door doesn't do it's job properly.
Not sure where the water gets in, but it’s common for 1st gen MINI’s to have rust in the seams under the door seal where the floor pan/door jamb/rocker panel comes together. Drying the water that gets under there is part of my wash routine.
I finally had a chance to get the car in the garage last night! wow life has beena whirlwind and my wife was out of town so I had a few min with out freezing weather or rain and a garage clean enough to get a car in. So yes all the stars aligned so I set out last night to pull the seat and take a peek at the wiring connection mentioned above. once everything was removed I didnt have very high hopes as when I could finally see my conection block it all looked good. comapratively to the pic in "the mini from Hell" instance mine looked fresh from the factory! that being said I so wanted this to be a thing i decided to shake every wire to be sure. sadly all of them were tight and looked great until the very last one came loose in my hand when i touched it! Being it looked so good i never even thought about pictures sorry! so whit onthe one wire being broken I was now renewed to the idea I might get one componet working and was over joyed! After a short time pondering how i wanted to reconnect just the one wire I descided to do the "right" thing (sorry too much vice grip garage) and I just cut all the wires from the plug and hooked them all together! A few short min later I was ready to throw the key in and see if anything had changed. Still not having the highest hopes I threw the key in to the switch and i was hearing a key chime I did not know existed so wow heres a change that I hate but its a change! I twist the key over to the on position and I am met with a annoying beep I have never had before as well as I notice the radio is showing a station now not the word disabeled! I am excited execpt for the fact I am starting to wonder if I have a self distruct sequence going off with this annoying beep that wont stop. I turn the key off while sitting in my driver seat and rowing the gears as a nervous tick while i think about this beep. When i switch the key back on the next time no beep! so I am happy and move on. I hook up th scanner right away hopeing this has helped with something deeper and "holy rusted metal Batman" I am seeing modules I have never seen before like the top module and the air bag module and wow things are faulting like crazy fromt eh memory but I can see them! so all excited I start going through each one at a time look at the messages and such then I clear the fault for that item and rescan and it doesnt fault again almost like now that it can talkt o it its actually working! I spent the next hour or so playing with live data menus and doing activations of random things with the scanner that i have always wanted to try and "play" with. Then it came time. I got to the top module in my scanner. I decided i was going to do it differently being I had so many other things come to life already. I cleared the codes then reached up and pushed a button that for as long as I have owned the car has never done a thing. as soon as i lay my finger to the switch my F@#$%^^! sun roof opened! I was freaking out with excitement this was huge and no flashing lights at that point so i pressed one more time and nothing more but I was happy to get that. upon reading the codes that now exist I see i have a switch in the back thats a short to ground. If it hadnt been 2 am at this point I would have gotten more into that one.
lets back up a few min to that annoying beep. turns out my car has the backup sensors and when I parked it earlier I had left it in reverse. then while thinking about it and playing with the gear shift I had not put it back in reverse when it went away! lol
all that said Wow just Wow! thanks for the advise and I will keep hacking away until I get it all!
how did you tie all the K-bus wires together? I stripped mine a ways back and soldered all of them together and then put that wire bundle inside a rubber hose so it would not touch ground or anything metal
how did you tie all the K-bus wires together? I stripped mine a ways back and soldered all of them together and then put that wire bundle inside a rubber hose so it would not touch ground or anything metal
Bryan
I stripped them back a bit as well then twisted them all together and threw a wire nut on them with some electrical tape for good measure! I was too lazy to drag out the soldering stuff
Ok so now that a lot of things have started working I am seeing a couple little things one thats super annoying and the other thats just fustrating. So my super annoying one is that my seatbelt alarm starts going off once you start moving and before I found the broken wire it would go off for like 10 seconds so no big deal. Now when it goes off it will chime for 90 seconds or so. This is reall annoying as a delivery driver let me tell you! My current solution is that now that I have a radio working I just turn it up so i cant hear the chime but not really a solution Im happy with yet! The other thing is now that I can actually see the missing modules via my scanner I am getting a message telling me CVM switch, stowage lock left, short circut to ground. I am going to post soemthing about this in my top thread as well! So thank in advance for any ideas I might be able to run down a bit.
do you have anything sitting in the passenger front seat telling the car that someone is there? That might be your seatbelt issue, or you might check with your dealer for the recall of the passenger side mat in the seat.
My mat actually apears to be working. If you set something in the seat the air bag off light will come on. It has the chime issue with it occupied or not. the code i am seeing says seat belt catch contact driver. I just wasnt expecting it to have changed once I got other things working. I will see if I can jump it at the sealbelt tensinor and see if i can narrow it down a bit. Just odd that It was a short chime like i expected but the new one is forever long.
The first week I had my Cabrio I forgot to lock down the little arm on the left side after I was playing with the car. The sun roof part would work but then it would not fold down after that. Once I locked down that arm the whole thing started working correctly again.
