E39 540i Touring Manual Conversion Checklist & Wiring / Coding

[madhakish]

im not going to argue.. I know what was required because I just got finished doing it and a 12v battery charger would not supply enough amperage or steady/high enough voltage to pass the voltage check prior to writing the dme. I continually received voltage related errors until I went with a power supply per the suggestion of two seperate BMW master techs who do manual swaps purely because they don't like autos. If you don't want to risk bricking your dme, I would acquire or borrow a supply for the job.

01/97 absolutely required a supply. Battery chargers would not supply voltage required and my newer "smart" charger doesn't supply constant enough voltage or sufficient amperage like your supply capable power supply or charger. No argument to be had.

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I have recoded my own cars countless times, done SMG and manual conversion codings on E39 and E46 cars, and countless minor recodes for whatever for a whole range of folks.

The mom's basement / never done nothin folks who turn up and say well 40A is required because i read it on teh innerwebz generally have zero real world experience. Steady solid voltage is what is required. Therefore yes it is advisable to have a decent supply. A voltage supply w tons of capacity and a "supply mode" is certainly ideal.

Absolutely and completely not "40A required".

The reality is that most coding will complete on battery power if the battery is healthy. Not really advised but for quick recode it will almost always be fine unless you are trying a full program+calibration DME flash. Most chargers are fine in most cases.

Now stop trolling my thread with pedantic dogmatic incorrect disinformation. Thanks!

This was stated to me directly by two separate master techs and you just said it yourself - consistent voltage. Not interwebs, not dogmatic.. 40a was literally the smallest I could find to borrow as most shops have 70 or 80a on a cart. Consistent voltage is neither delivered by my "smart" battery charger, nor just my battery powering the car electronics for the period of time required to write the dme. You can code other things without a supply, but the dme should be done with a supply attached. Most (cheap?) chargers I've had with a high amperage output run on a duty cycle which will cut out after so much time, at least the cheap ones I've owned..

GearGrinder - before you launch into your own unfounded attacks on people perhaps consider that recoding your own cars "many times" is no more valid evidence than "dogmatic". Change options or set a few things absolutely does not require a power supply. Recode your DME? Ya, you might want to ensure power/voltage.

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I've gotten my car to run but for some reason the ews just will not take the update zcs info in ncs. The komb took it fine thinks it's a manual but no go for the ews. Haven't gotten to the flash yet. Any idea why this might be happening

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Fwiw when I plug my zcs into zeko, there were no automatic option codes the only thing I could find to change was the 528ia to 528i in the type area. When I coded it changed the standard key and the version key. But for whatever reason the ews took the standard key but would not take the version key.

I re-read this, originally read it as you were coding your dme.. so you've got your ike coded but the ews still is coded for auto and that's what you're having trouble getting to stick?

[geargrinder]

01/97 absolutely required a supply. Battery chargers would not supply voltage required and newer "smart" chargers don't supply constant power/amperage like a power supply does. No argument to be had.

More total BS.

Absolutely depends on the "Smart Charger" in question.

Many have a SUPPLY function. Mine does for sure. Becomes a constant-voltage supply.

And the good smart chargers indeed can tell when there is load on the car electrical system and when they see that they go into a supply mode until the draw stablizes at low levels.. If the draw is over a certain amount and of a certain signature they wait to start the true smart charge cycle. So indeed they are basically in 'constant-voltage supply' while they see that lights and systems are still drawing and don't start the pulsed voltage special stuff until later.

Also your technical terms are way off which demonstrates how ignorant and off base you are on this. You'd never want a constant-amperage supply on a car like this. You want constant voltage. Constant amperage set to 40A would be hysterical - you'd rapidly burn up just about everything in the car if fuses didn't blow first.

[madhakish]

Many chargers do and many don't. Yours does, mine doesn't. Your right, I'm wrong. Calm down and let's try to help the guy.

You got me on voltage v amperage terminology - you are correct, it's a constant 14v supply, capable of up to 40a supply..

Let's just breath a bit eh? Fuck. I'm not trying to be misleading, I can go correct a post it doesn't have to be an internet fight.

I did require a steady voltage supply to code the DME. It was the aforementioned 14v/40a. I was advised several times to use a 60a capable supply or higher but the 40 was sufficient and kept a solid 13.8v. Attempts to code with two other supplies resulted in essentially undervolt errors and dme coding wouldn't go forward.

Ews had no such troubles, nor IKE, using a Schaeffer battery charger for supply.

[madhakish]

I've gotten my car to run but for some reason the ews just will not take the update zcs info in ncs. The komb took it fine thinks it's a manual but no go for the ews. Haven't gotten to the flash yet. Any idea why this might be happening

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Fwiw when I plug my zcs into zeko, there were no automatic option codes the only thing I could find to change was the 528ia to 528i in the type area. When I coded it changed the standard key and the version key. But for whatever reason the ews took the standard key but would not take the version key.

Back to the business at hand.. Any errors when writing?

Iirc (don't have it open in front of me) you perform the zcs "read" of ews coding in zcs which saves to a file, backup/edit the stream file on disk to set the correct option, and using the same process used to "read" you select the "write" option. These are of course german in my version, but I've seen a number of screenshots of English, and many different dialog formats so one may not be exactly like the other.

Geargrinders and others original instructions are sufficient to work your way through most differences in app versions as the dialogs and steps are mostly similar. Can you list out the specific steps you're following and provide screenshots of what you're doing at each step? Might help us see understand if there's a step being missed or erroring out for some reason.

[madhakish]

Also, did you do an Ews <-> dme sync at any point?

[geargrinder]

Let's just breath a bit eh? Fuck. I'm not trying to be misleading, I can go correct a post it doesn't have to be an internet fight.

Fair enough and indeed lets be civil. It's just that repeatedly people post stuff like this insisting that this 40A stuff is true when it isn't and that leads to crazy disinformation and other guys thinking they need some massive fancy power supply gear when probably the battery would be fine even if though it's not really advisable. (in reply to your previous rant I've reflashed DME's tons of times as well - think I said that - and V8 and E46 man conversions I did all require DME flashes... and i never said a supply wasn't advisable I indeed explicitly said it was... why I have to repeat that I don't know...) However still... DME reflashing doesn't need more than a few amps either.

So you understand - the reason I hammer that hard immediately is that the first the more the disinfo gets repeated the others repeat it and then it starts to become a 'fact'... and situations like this arise when a guy declares this fact here in my thread where it is wrong and irrelevant, and that leads to the second thing as guys with problems end up chasing down some hardware thing thinking that's their issue when really it is something else. The guy then is chasing a fancy supply or charger red herring when really he has another problem that needs to be sorted and/or can be sorted easily.

The true-fact that leads to disinformation is that yes late E-series and F-series cars, when reprogrammed with dealer tools in dealer shop, can take an hour or several to complete (ex: with ISTA/P or whatever horrible inefficient stuff the dealers started using post early-oughts) and yes the whole car needs to be turned on then for as much as multiple hours and of course then you want a solid supply the whole time... But this is an E39 manual conversion thread. That scenario is completely irrelevant and people need to stop mixing up the 2... which again is why I come down hard on it... But indeed lets keep it civil and fact-based around here.

Here's some pix of my bench flash setup that might be useful to prove the point...

Note an M62TU DME idling away at .25 amps. Flashing it barely requires more, a couple of amps is more than plenty and it will never hit a couple amps even I don't think. Yes in-car flashing a ton of other stuff is on in the car at the same time, but just showing, this is why a little handful-of-amps charger is usually fine and even a good battery works OK if it is a quick in and out reprogram...


Here's an E39 high cluster in full bore "all lights and run the stepper motors" demo test mode... still not even 2 amps....


Maybe that is helpful to show that I'm not just making this stuff up and going on one or two lucky anecdotal experiences myself. I have reprogrammed E39/E46 DME's many times. On bench and in-car. Doesn't take much. Blacknight and Terraphantm back me up on this and both have lots of real world experience flashing DME's and manually converting cars and getting up to all kinds of coding/flashing hijinx.

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I've gotten my car to run but for some reason the ews just will not take the update zcs info in ncs. The komb took it fine thinks it's a manual but no go for the ews. Haven't gotten to the flash yet. Any idea why this might be happening

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Fwiw when I plug my zcs into zeko, there were no automatic option codes the only thing I could find to change was the 528ia to 528i in the type area. When I coded it changed the standard key and the version key. But for whatever reason the ews took the standard key but would not take the version key.

NNY - Did you try just leaving the Version Key the same? Not using the zeko change? Sometimes zeko does some weird stuff. AFAIU the VN key isn't really used for much anyway. And the I6 is really "self coding" for the most part - very few changes required... Also did you try recoding the whole car to the 'good' ZCS that the IKE took? You don't actually HAVE to have the ZCS match in the EWS as long as other people aren't going to mess w/ your car coding-wise...

Suggestions per above: First -read the "new" good ZCS from IKE, then recode entire car. With luck that reprograms the EWS for the new ZCS without it being written. I don't know that there isn't a validation step for EWS but have never had to try.

How important the VN is I don't know without trying to dig deep into the daten files... Terra would know probably... supposedly it contains possible important programming data but I am not sure what that means practically...

[madhakish]

Lets call it a wash. I'll be more accurate with my initial diagnosis and terminology in your thread, and just let me know if you think I'm off base or smoking crack and I'll go back and correct. You're clearly not just messing around given your bench setup, didn't mean to imply you were just pointing out the irony. Your bench is actually pretty impressive..

Without anything fancier than an "old" simply charger, and a cheap "smart" charger with dme in car I was not able to maintain voltage to write the dme, winkfp wouldn't proceed citing voltage errors regardless of supply. Multimeter showed 11.8-12.5v using either and 11.8 straight off the battery. Using the power supply I was able to achieve steady 13.8v and winkfp finally proceeded.

At this point I'm honestly more interested in that box on your bench and whether you made or bought it, and what software stack, versions, and data versions your running.. I've only been able to hodgepodge a working set of data files and mix-n-matched versions ediabas/inpa/ncs/winkfp stuff but its finicky and tempermental and at least one data set is still in German. I'm tempted to setup easydis on a dedicated machine ad I've now got an x3 in the stable and have 3 cars computers to work on.. If there's something better that others are using I'm all ears.

[geargrinder]

At this point I'm honestly more interested in that box on your bench and whether you made or bought it, and what software stack, versions, and data versions your running..

The bench rig I made a few years back and just overhauled a bit, it's not as fancy as it looks. It is functionally nothing more really than a bench supply plus an OBD 'breakout box' and an ammeter inserted.

I basically combined a high quality voltage supply (now I want to check but I want to say 15-20A? far more than needed at any rate...) and an ammeter into a case, wired it up to an OBD socket pulled from a junkyard, then I wire junkyard factory connectors in to that so I can plug in modules, give them voltage supply, and use their diagnostic outputs. Until a week or so ago I would hardwire connectors in so there was a bunch of socket connector junk hanging off the side for BMW, Audi Motronic, etc. but I just redid it to have that terminal strip so I can amass a collection of little pigtails instead and not have a giant messy octopus hanging off the side and have it hard to transport around. In some ideal world I find some type of 8 pin panel connector and wire my pigtails to those but since this is for my use only not commercial consumption it doesn't seem worth the expense and effort given that the terminal strip works great and is bone-simple.

There is also +12v and ground on the front in case w/ banana plugs in case I need it for a boot mode read of a module or some other purpose. There are 2 switched power rails with lights on front so you can progressively turn on "constant" power (terminal 30) and then "switched power" (terminal 15) sequentially. This comes in handy if you think something is blowing a fuse or an ECU calls for an ignition switch on/off or whatever. Reading the ammeter is also handy for ECU's that have issues - for ex: the Audi motronics can blow output drivers when they get old and when they do the idle amperage goes up, and sometimes they get bad solder connections and sometimes you can see that w/ an amperage draw that's too low... Naturally there's a fuse on the output in case something is shorted or I screw up.

By making it an OBD on the front I can then use whatever cable I want on it and have flexibility there. For instance I could have (and thought about) a k-dcan interface built inside it then instead had a USB on the front but given the USB-K/L boards burn out with some regularity this is easy and lets me swap cables around and use whatever I want - an MPPS cable or whatever - and know I have no issues w/ the cable if it works here and/or on the car. It does not have CAN Hi/Lo terminals at the moment as it started as an Audi box for me for older cars so all I cared about was K/L lines - but I will add that soon enough and easily enough - just need 2 more OBD pins and 2 more terminals on the strip.

So given that - my computer & SW just needs to be the usual suite of stuff. Mostly use INPA/NCSExpert. I have both an older version of BMW Software Tools and a newer one as I found in past sometimes one would work but not another for reasons I could not sort out... but mainly use the newer version (BMW Tools 2.11 or 2.12? I want to say...) I use PASoft but that's more often for in-car stuff. I have DIS and Progman etc. but like most guys who have done this for a while you quickly stop screwing with those and just use the low-level tools which are clean and fast and hassle free in comparison. They tend to be just a big PITA and obscure to navigate and take forever and have less power and flexibility... Have bunch of VW/Audi SW / cables if I need them (which I don't on the bench much anymore so use those mainly for the wife's DD).

Some of the factory tools can throw errors depending on what module you scan if they don't see a whole car (I think it relates to modules that are looking for a bus-master that isn't there or something...), so you can't rely on it being 100% on-bench like it is in-car, but for the most part works pretty well.

[NNY528I]

Ok got it to run yesterday. Revs great when trains is not in gear but when I put it in gear and let clutch out can't get it to go over 1000 Rpms just falls on its face.

I have not not reflashed the ecu yet so maybe that's part of it. Any input?


unfortunately now the starter is acting like I sheared off a bunch of the teeth in the pinion. Think I tried to start with in gear and ebrake on. So will have to wait till I have the bucks for a starter before I try again.

[amancuso]

Ok got it to run yesterday. Revs great when trains is not in gear but when I put it in gear and let clutch out can't get it to go over 1000 Rpms just falls on its face.

I have not not reflashed the ecu yet so maybe that's part of it. Any input?


unfortunately now the starter is acting like I sheared off a bunch of the teeth in the pinion. Think I tried to start with in gear and ebrake on. So will have to wait till I have the bucks for a starter before I try again.

OMG Jason!!! I had AT to 5MT swap done on one of my Z3 last year. I had a shop do it but it wasn't too bad. Picking up another 5er tomorrow.

[dk500]

Note an M62TU DME idling away at .25 amps. Flashing it barely requires more, a couple of amps is more than plenty and it will never hit a couple amps even I don't think. Yes in-car flashing a ton of other stuff is on in the car at the same time, but just showing, this is why a little handful-of-amps charger is usually fine and even a good battery works OK if it is a quick in and out reprogram...

To add on, all that I needed for my flash was a 2A charger after the battery connected with opening and closing doors for a few days. My car is a 6/96

How did you guys go through with cleaning up your E-Boxes? What do you do with the old EGS harness and connector?

[StRaNgEdAyS]

I've left my EGS cables in for the moment, I reused one for the reversing switch, the other is tucked away for now. When I do the clutch change and I'm sure I won't need to reuse any of the loom I'll clean that up a bit more.

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[geargrinder]

Same. Way too much fuss for no benefit aside from car anal tidiness for me to bother much...

[bombernz]

[QUOTE=geargrinder;27224622]BMW E39 540iT Manual conversion

thanks for this comprehensive information! Im in New Zealand and about to convert a 540i to manual for playing on a racetrack

[StRaNgEdAyS]

Look up pantri trading on ebay UK for parts you won't find easily in UnZud so you won't have to pay BMW stealership prices.
Pedals and the like....

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[blackknight530i]

I was just helping someone do a S62 swap in a touring and noticed that we can simplify the auto-start delete even easier than my previous suggestion. TerraPhantm even posted the solution and I didn't catch it. Instead of cutting pin 6 and 40 on the DME plugs, just cut the blue with black stripe wire going from the EWS pin 8 to pin 8 of the starter relay near the EWS and connect the wire going to the starter relay to terminal 15 power. The closest location I've found so far for terminal 15 in that area is pin 17 of the black connector on the instrument cluster. Since a wire needs to be run to the cluster for the reverse switch anyways, you'll already have the cluster out and this will be much easier. This means the start control is still controlled by the DME, meaning that if you get a virginized DME from DUDMD or if doing a S62 swap and you transfer the ISN information to the DME, it will still be fully secure just like a real M5.

Notice the F20 fuse that is supplying Terminal 15 (switched while running or non-running but key on) power to the starter relay. That is the only thing different between the auto and manual. The auto gets that power from the EWS pin 8. Now, I haven't tested this myself, but since this diagram is from a M5, I'm assuming it at least works for the S62, but it's possible that the 540i might still need the old method that is already mentioned. I'd be curious for someone with a 540i manual to check pin 40 on x60004 when starting the car and see if it is ground or not. If it is, Then this method should work for 540i swaps as well.

S62 Starter Wiring 2.jpg

[blarf]

You'd need to wire up the clutch switch or short the wire to ground for that to work, right?

[blackknight530i]

You'd need to wire up the clutch switch or short the wire to ground for that to work, right?

That's completely separate wiring. This is just for getting rid of the auto-start feature since manuals don't use it.

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[blarf]

That's completely separate wiring. This is just for getting rid of the auto-start feature since manuals don't use it.

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So the difference is that instead of jumping 6 & 40, you're running a wire to the instrument cluster? Is there any advantage to this (beyond ease which seems like six of one vs half-dozen of the other to me)?

[blackknight530i]

So the difference is that instead of jumping 6 & 40, you're running a wire to the instrument cluster? Is there any advantage to this (beyond ease which seems like six of one vs half-dozen of the other to me)?

No advantage other than eliminating the need to cut and splice those two wires at the DME.

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[Cracker]

For some reason, RealOEM shows that the coolant plug used to cap off the bottom of the alternator housing on the m62tu to be a M18X1.5 screw/bolt. http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=11_2245

The part you have listed is CORRECT!!!


I had to replace my 5 yo/26k miles Behr radiator, so perfect time to update to manual setup!
Here's what you get to remove:


Here is where the 10mm bolt is hiding for the upper coolant pipe return...


And here are where the 2 bolts are that hold the m62tu transmission cooler...

[geargrinder]

Nice. Yep, I rolled w the exchanger sitting 'dead' for a long time but was nice to yank it out and get a real radiator drain plug!

[geargrinder]

First post updated to fix grievous error in missing cluster wire information...

[magrahamkp08]

Grievous seems a bit harsh


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[dk500]

Best thread on the forum