I press my key fob to unlock the car and there is no response. I do it a couple more times and about 30 seconds later the car unlocks. Another scenario is that I unlock the rear hatch, which rarely has a delay, but then go to unlock the doors and about 30 seconds later the car will unlock after repeated attempts. If I go in and start the car right away the car will start but it will take about 30 seconds for the status lights to come on. Then they stay on. I have to turn the car off and restart it to get rid of all the status lights.

Any thoughts?

 

My thoughts say electrical system, battery. Do you know the battery is working 100% correctly?

 

Yes, just had the timing belt replaced and they looked into it. Said the DME pins were showing corrosion which caused the car to not start. Said it could be in there. But then I was told the DME has nothing to do with the wake up, that it might be the FSM (footwell module).

 

Battery is weak, or the FRM footwell module is having issuses. The DME is in the engine bay and the FRM is on the front footwell.

 

Mine is doing the same thing. If I press Unlock, it takes about 10 second for the lights to flash. The car makes some strange bings and bongs. Its annoying. I know my batter is pretty worn, but it does it even after its sat on the charger until the charger says its full. FRM is expensive to replace, hope that's not the problem.

 

Check connections at battery posts. Tight?

 

If you do have a new battery already installed, YOU MUST REGISTER as a new battery thru your OBDII scanner tool

 

This is not ALWAYS true. It depends on your car. Mine doesn't have the additional thing on the negative battery terminal and doesn't need registering. If there is something extra on the negative terminal wire, then you must.

 

I fixed it!!! It turns out that if you install an aftermarket radio, you have to install this chime retention module to retain chimes. Well, it seems that it does more than just chimes. If you install an aftermarket radio, you need to run a wire from the battery to power it, because MINI have decided that they will turn off the "constant power" after a bit, causing most radios to lose their settings. The factory radio seems to have non-volatile memory that can tolerate the interruption of "constant power". It also seems that the chime retention module needs constant power. If the power is removed, the chime module takes 10 seconds to "boot up", and hence the delay and strange bings and bongs.
So I re-wired the chime retention module today, connecting my line from the battery to the module, just like I did to the radio, and now the unlocking/flashing lights work properly!
I'm super excited about this--its been doing the 10 second delay crap for literally years!!