A young man looking at my Mini at a recent British car show told me that BMW had set a limit on the number of times you can erase codes in the main module, which he called the footwell module because of its location there, and that if code erasures exceed the set limit they can no longer be erased and the only solution then is to buy a new module from Mini for big $$$. He said he'd run into this in his work as a mechanic on BMWs and Minis and to be careful and not erase codes that are not causing a problem so you don't run up against the limit..

Has anyone else experienced this or heard of a limit on code erasures? My 2004 Mini Cooper S JCW has a dozen codes on various lights set even though all the lights seem to be working as they should. It also has two window fuse codes, A1 & A2, although the fuses 1 and 19 check good (might possibly be relevant since both windows no longer dip or go down). There are no OBDII engine codes set, just the mini specific codes scanned with a Schwaben scanner.

I hesitate to erase these light codes until I can find out if there is in fact a limit on code erasures or if such a limit is year or model specific. Anyone heard about this?

 

I am thinking about moving this to the General MINI Talk area as I for one would like to know, however, thought the codes were in the ECU not the BCM/Footwell Module.

 

Most of the codes the Schwaben scanner reported were listed under "ZKE Central Body Electronics" faults and consisted of letters or numbers or a combination of the two followed by "GM:" and then a description for example, "7A GM: tail light left or open circuit", "CB GM: LWR front sensor interruption (with xenon only)", and "CO GM: high-beam headlight/headlight flasher switch faulty or short circuit". There was one listed under "EWS vehicle immobilizer fault", "0F voltage supply EWS3 control module".

I assumed any engine faults would be stored in the ECU, but I don't know where these others are stored.

 

There is no limit on how many times you can erase codes in the DME or the BCM.

That would defeat the purpose of having the ability to erase them.