I detect a gold mine for MrBlah... if it works.

Still need a way to program the new chip, I could just swap the chips but I would prefer to do it right

I ordered an MC912 programmer from China. They have a reputation of being less than stellar, but the price was good enough for me to give it a try. Will be here in 6 weeks. I'll update when I have it in house and have given it a go. If it doesn't work im thinking of doing a chip swap.

I stuck a pi in my spot as well. Would love to know what your setup is like?

it works well for me, it's my data logger & time display, also has some warnings programmed into it

New Year = New Information? Maybe, hopefully ...please update!

I'm still waiting on the programmer. Should be here in 2 more weeks. Will report back with success or failure.

Quick update: Today I received the programmer and was able to give it a shot. I was able to read the mileage and write new mileage to the chip successfully.

Now that mileage is taken care of, I need to figure out the VIN. I can see part of the VIN, and if I chose, I could write over the data currently there. However, I can't see all of the VIN meaning I could write the wrong part and corrupt the chip, so I backed out. Will have to do some more research, but if anyone has info and changing the VIN, please let me know.







Speaking of VIN, I learned some interesting stuff about VIN numbers today. In the 17 digit code...

Digits 1-3 are the WMI
- 1 - Country of origin
- 2 - Region in country
- 3 - Division
(Digits 1-3 WMW is for MINI)

Digits 4-8 are vehicle attributes (the following applies to 1st Gen only afaik)
- 4 - ???? (Best I can tell Gen 1 gets an "R" Gen 2 got an "M")
- 5 - Series (For MINI, an "E" is hardtop S /// "C" is hardtop base /// "H" is convertible S /// "F" is convertible base)
- 6 - Body style (Seems like all MINI have a 3 here??)
- 7 - Body Style (US vehicles have a 3 and UK vehicles have a 2.... For LH/RH I'm thinking)
- 8 - ???? (Some have a 4 and some have a 5... no clue what this one is about either)

- 9 - Check digit / Security Code
- 10 - Year of vehicle
- 11 - Factory vehicle was made

Digits 12-17 serial / production line number of vehicle
- These start with a T (for the plant I think), followed by either an C, D, F, J, K, or L (not sure what for) Then a series of 5 numbers.

Some of that is probably inaccurate, but its what I could decipher today. I probably should have looked on the forum before wasting my time as I'm sure someone else has already done it!
But, here's a great little video explanation if you want to watch it yourself -

Very cool, will you be posting a how-to?

wow, really impressive work!

Wow awesome work. If you can crack the vin issue . You are going to be a busy person.

Sure, once/if I figure out the VIN I'll report back with what I did. Changing the km was actually way easier than expected. Hardest part was getting correct serial bus controller installed on the old laptop with 2gb ram. Now I'm heading out of town for work though, will have to tackle it in a week when I get back. Started trying to figure this out back in June, really hard leaving this thing now that I feel I'm making some headway.

Once this is set, I can get that custom HU installed. From there hopefully OBDII in the dash. Funny, the video you posted above is one I saw when I was looking for solutions.

Link to my HU project (in works) here - https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...lity-help.html

Thanks, getting there!

you have to set the kilometers to 0km. then you can code with ncs expert or ista / p. This wil adjust the vin.
you must first adjust your zcs. I have done this several times, both with minis and bmws

AutoMutt,

Could I send you a couple of computers for you to work on? At my local Pull & Pay, there is two 1st gen Mini Coopers for the picking. One is a 2005 non-S that I know had the chrono pak gauges and the other is a 2005 Mini S without the chrono pak gauges. I could get the parts you need for testing & experimenting. But I would need you to tell me what to get and where in the car they are located. I really have no idea what part you are working on, but I think it is either the PCM or BCM. Please understand that these computers are NOT coming out of my running car so if you mess it up or I never get it back, it is not really a big deal. It may help to have a spare part to experiment with and have both the chrono and non-chrono to compare. I will pay for the parts and cover the shipping in support of your efforts. Just let me know!

Thanks, Shimaze

Super kind of you, thanks for the offer! I actually have a spare one I bought and was playing with. I get back from my work trip tomorrow and I'm hoping I'll have time to mess around with it. I'll have to look into Thomm's suggestion too (don't know what "zcs" is). Someone else pm'd me and advised to use a hex editor. So I have a few things to try. Will post back tomorrow or next weekend once I've had time to work with it.

@AutoMutt
I´ve the same Tool, with the same result.
Next step searching where the VIN is programmed in.
VIN starts with "20 5A 06 CE" in Hex.

So I would try to read out the origin VIN from part with INxA
With VIN to Hex will know how VIN is calculated in Hex.
Than with BinViewer searching in complete File and trying to manipulate.
Maybe it´ll be a solution.

Out of my expirience in Engin ECU´s, the VIN can be written in more than one times. In this case, all entries must be corrected.

Always happy hacking ;-)

I didn't think the VIN could be changed on KMB via OBD as it's stored on an EEPROM chip isn't it? Only if VIN = FF would this work?

Have you not needed to replace the EEPROM chip at all? So you're managing to program a used EEPROM by flashing it through the MCU? Very cool. Did you sort out the VIN issue? I think I could help, I've changed VIN's many of times on the EMS units and I'd imagine it's the same encryption

@Warwick Dean
With this tool programming on bench is possible

@AutoMutt
"zcs" are the short cut for the german word Zentraler Codier Schluessel" = Central Coding Key
This is the key whre all options from car coded in.
You can read out with NCS for example.

Thanks for the reply, I'll try to look for this device as if it means I don't have to buy new blank EEPROM chip and desolder from the board I think it will be a much safer option 😍

Thanks for the reply, I will try to find this device as if it means I don't have to buy a new EEPROM and desolder from the board it will make my life much easier as I'm not soo great with soldering the small stuff 😍

Okay, gotcha. I've got some time this weekend to play around so I'll see what kind of damage I can do (figuratively speaking of course). I need to see if I can hook my donor parts up to the current setup and use INPA to pull the VIN. As of right now I have no clue what I'm looking for. Didn't think to ask for the VIN when I bought the part... ooops. Not the most well versed in the MINI software so this will be a slow process I'm sure.

@AutoMutt When you fire up NCS it will want to read the ZCS from either the EWS or the KMB, In your case if you've got the KMB installed and select KMB to initilise it will give you the VIN on there. Or, simply go to INPA and go into KMB through body and chassis option, and i believe you can select Coding date or Identification, that will give you the VIN also .

I know someone above seems to think you can change the VIN using NCS but i very much doubt thats correct, but option to change VIN is fg_schrieben if you wanted to try it. It will ask you for your VIN and a checksum digit. (As i mentioned how to pull the VIN of the donor part, to get your own VIN with checksum digit, simply initilise using EWS instead of KMB)

NCS give me an "IDENTIFICATION ERROR" when I choose either KMB or EWS. However I can get into INPA and pull data. The good news is, the km value I added via the programmer is showing up in INPA and I no longer have a mi mismatch issue.

But I am getting 2 errors in INPA instead of only one I expected.
1: "KOMBI VIN does not match VIN in ECU" (expected or course)
2: :Wrong RIP type was received" ... This has something to do with the Instrument Remote but I'm not sure what the issue it.

I can also only see the last 7 digits from my donor cluster. But, knowing the first 8, the last 7 and the year, I have what I believe to be the correct VIN. But, regardless of that, is there a way to just use winkfp to flash the VIN to KOMBI?

Although, Thomm did say set km to 0 and I could use NCS. Guess I'll search forums to see if anyone accomplished with winkfp and then consider the new km flash.

Other thought is to buy a blank chip and start from scratch. - https://www.auto-chips.com/mc912dc12...91d-p3140.html

[edit] quick update after an hour of trying to use winkfp. I've imported all the files a few times, can't seem to see the kombi in comfort mode. I can pull it up in expert mode though. Not sure if I've installed wrong or what. Tired tonight, will take another look tomorrow.

Sorry for my English, but I life in Belgium, so my language is Dutch.
I don’t think you can program the combi with winkfp. It is not necessary also.
If the miles are 0, you can code the combi like a new one.
if you can read out the original zcs of your car (kbm or original cluster) I can recalculate a zcs with the chrono package.
Than you have to use the new zcs for coding the chrono cluster otherwise the software is looking for a nav or normal cluster.

You could in theory use WINKFP yes but the problem is finding calibration files for the KMB. I have only ever managed to source EMS2K (DME) files for winkfp for the R50.

I will decode the VIN today and send you the bytes, with that then you should hopefully be able to locate the correct VIN within the binary file. I am pretty certain that buying a new MCU won't help since the VIN and Mileage is stored on an EEPROM. What you're doing is flashing through the MCU which would be the CPU which is allowing masking of the EEPROM (is how you're able to change the data without lifting the chip and putting it into a programmer).

I may be wrong here but I don't think you could change the VIN in the KMB even if the mileage was set to 0, as far as I'm aware if you wanted to flash the VIN through OBD then the current VIN would have to be set to FF aswell as the mileage to 00.

NCS should almost certainly be working especially if you initialise by reading ZCS from the EWS initially, check over the install. I've put new modules into my car and NCS still operated, we need that to be able to adjust the new vehicle coding ect. You could try communicating using TOOL32 also but I think you will get the same error.

I think if you're prepared to flash on bench again that we can rectify the VIN no problem. We could change ZCS through the binary aswell but that's going to take some decoding unless the GM/SA/VN values shown in NCS and INPA ect are simply stored without any encoding like VIN's have.

I'll drop you a pm. Just to confirm, that VIN in the print screen is of the current KMB right and not your actual VIN?