Hello Guys,

Here is the story. I admitted a 2006 Mini Cooper S ( built dec 2006) to my shop the other day. It came in with a misfire in cylinder number 2. It had absolutely no compression. The owner bought an engine to install it. I went ahead and got the engine and transmission out. Piece of cake. Put the new engine in, fitted the engine and transmission together and went inside the engine bay. Plugged all the wiring and went to start it and VROOOOMMMMM... Great. Car runs good with no problems no engine codes. Let s go home. I went home.

Next day I woke up, went to the shop, sat inside the car and took a breath. I went to start it and no start. Well great. Checked fuel pump and it was good. Checked spark, no spark. Ok it might be the coil, so I tried another coil I had laying around. The same no start. At this point I know what you guys are thinking, I must have left the battery go discharged, or started the car while locked, but none of that. I was very careful. I checked for codes with an OBD2 reader and came up with a code aiming to the EWS (immobilizer).

So at this point I know the car is immobilized. That s cool no problem. I ll go ahead and order an K+D CAN cable (USB) from ebay for like $30. (green circuit board kind)

I went ahead and found my self a old computer with Windows XP 32 bit system and installed INPA/EDIABAS. I spent countless hours trying to get it setup. It can be annoying but I got the program to run in my computer. No errors. I fixed the Ediabas.ini file with the remote host(6801) and the ip address(192.168.68.1) Also setup the OBD.ini file with the com port 4.I installed the drivers of the K+D CAN cable and went to the device manager of the computer and configure it to com port 4. Also set the lactancy to 1 in properties of the com port.

Great. I connected my cable to the usb port. Connected the cable to the obd port in the car. Started Inpa in my computer and it detected the vehicle. Battery was on and so was ignition. I went into the R53 option, and after that into the DME. By pressing shift+F6 I am able to go into the immobilizer option that would allow me to reset it but no luck. it says No response from control unit.

I bridged/jumped the pins 7 and 8. Same thing. No response from control unit.

After that I figured, maybe I am talking in the wrong language to the car. so I found the K+D CAN utility 2.0. While using the green board K+D CAN wire I tried changing the K can language or D can language without luck. So I thought, maybe the wire is just a bad wire. There are plenty of stories online with bad wires.

So then, I borrowed another K+D CAN wire from my buddy. This one was a white circuit board one (supposedly worst than the green board one) However, I was able to change from D can to K can and also into Can off.

To my understanding, what the K+D CAN Utility does (correct me if I am wrong) is that it sets your K+D CAN cable to either "speak" to your car in K language, or D language depending on your needs. So I set it up for K language and I get the same error from immobilizer ( No response from control unit). I did the same for D language and the same from immobilizer (No response from control unit). I went and set it with CAN off and same thing(No response from control unit). Funny thing is that it always reads the DME, Power steering and some other modules, but not the Immobilizer, AIR BAGS and some others.

After this I tried bridging/jumping Pin 7 and pin 8 while on K language and nothing, while on D language and nothing, while on CAN off language and nothing. All of them show NO RESPONSE FROM CONTROL UNIT.

Hey, maybe is the EWS that is toasted. So I took it apart ( the box says EWS4) and took it outside the box and there s nothing fried, and even though I can not seem to talk to the EWS directly, when I go into INPA and read the digital values from the EWS, it says that is locked and that the codes do not match. So it should not be fried. It establish communication trough the DME but not directly.

So I ordered a baseball bat from ebay for like 15 dollars shipped.

At this point I am just blaming it on this cheap wires. I was going to order a wire coming from One Stop Electronics. Is way more expensive but if I can get my customers happy, I ll be happy.

Also, I noticed that when I try to connect to the vehicle, a warning comes up " Language variants do not match". It does not stop from connecting though so I dont think is that important.

Fuses are all good. Battery fully charged, pins are aligned in the OBD2 port.

What am I missing?

 

Check battery voltage.

 

gonna do this. i ll be back with an update later.

 

Ok so battery fully charged and tested. No response from control unit

I checked the voltages in my OBD2 port with ignition in position 2. This is what I get.

1 green/blue 12.09 v
4 brown ground
5 brown/black 62.5 mv and .480 koms( shouldnt this be ground? )
7 violet/white 1.534 v shouldnt this be over 2 volts if it is k line?
8 gray/ white 9.22
6 red/white 11.10
16 red/blue/yellow 12.13
All values grounded to chasis

Does somebody mind checking their mini for these values to compare?


Thanks

 

Well found the culprit. Body control unit wiring is destroyed. Here are some pictures. It seems that there must be some water leakage trough the windshield and it all falled into the bottom connectors of the body control module. I just wanted to update everyone.

Case closed.

 

Check the sunroof drain tube connection under the headliner. They frequently come loose and flood the BMC. It would suck to fix the wiring and BCM and have it happen again. Most people use a hose clamp or wire tie to keep the drain tubes in place. There should be two drains in front and two in the rear. There are a few threads on the forum you can search for for pics and repair tips.

 

Where is that BCM located? I need to check mine. I don't have a sunroof, but have had windshield leaks on other cars. I have a problem that I can't figure out and it must me something similar to this.

 

Passenger side kick panel sir. If you are the passenger, it should be right by your right foot. Take the hood latch out with a 10 mm socket and an extension, and gently pull the plastic cover. You ll see it.

 

Awesome! Thanks