[Gintoki]

I’m about to tear my hair out battling some of these issues

When I purchased my 07 E92 328i 2 months ago, my headlights did not function at all, when I took them out and apart to check on them, all electronic modules were rusted to hell and wired were falling apart, so I bought an aftermarket set and called it a day. The set functions quite well with LED bulbs installed and I love everything about the look, however, I still had the adaptive headlight error in my dash.

I followed a video showing what to remove in VO then writing to CAS and FRM/NFRM

It did clear the error but it also managed to somehow cause my frameless windows to not drop a few mm when opening and closing my doors. They now impact the frame of the car every time.

I’ve tried the variety of resets noted via this and other bmw forums (using the buttons) but none worked to resolve the issue. I’ve also re-initialized the windows via inpa so I know the “resets” are happening. Windows work fine and one touch operation works as well. It just does not back out the few millimeters it needs to clear the exterior door trim no matter what I try.

I have a feeling something changed within the cars programming so that it does not know it’s a coupe maybe? Because at the very same time the windows started doing this, the belt handover stopped working as well. What leads me to this thinking is due to the sedan not having either of these features.

On an unrelated note, I’m unsure of what FRM I have. inpa seems to indicate FRM_87 (so FRM1 /FRMFA right?). I could not read or write to the FRM initially because the prior owner had #0909 set in the VO, when I changed it to my actual manu date #0906 ncsexpert was able to read and program it. Here’s the confusing part, from the research I’ve done, everyone swears that FRM1 does not support welcome lights. But up until very recently (same time as window and belt failure) my car had halos that turn on when the car is both locked and unlocked. Now the only thing that comes in is tail lights and front turn signals on lock/unlock. So how was that working on an FRM that does not support it lol

[e90yyc]

***

Not familiar enough with the coupe to know the significance of 09/2009 prod ***

Start by fixing your prod date, default code your module, and then see if the issues persist.

My dogs are kicking the shit out of each other so I have to leave it at that, but I can provide more details later.

[ptpending]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

You have an E92 which came with FRM2.

Prod date in VO is #yymm. Not familiar enough with the coupe to know the significance of 09/2009 prod but I do know that FRM3 was fitted on the coupes well before that time. According to RealOEM, builds from 03/2007 forward should have FRM3.

Start by fixing your prod date, default code your module, and then see if the issues persist.

My dogs are kicking the shit out of each other so I have to leave it at that, but I can provide more details later.

realoem(ETK) may list only successor ECUs
ie that means that they provide now only replacement parts, and for these cars they propose FRM3 Max Brose and Max Kuester as universal replacement. But FRM3 historically went when Headlights got LED DRL or LED turn signals.

[Gintoki]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

You have an E92 which came with FRM2.

Prod date in VO is #yymm. Not familiar enough with the coupe to know the significance of 09/2009 prod but I do know that FRM3 was fitted on the coupes well before that time. According to RealOEM, builds from 03/2007 forward should have FRM3.

Start by fixing your prod date, default code your module, and then see if the issues persist.

My dogs are kicking the shit out of each other so I have to leave it at that, but I can provide more details later.

All E92s came with FRM2 or is that just something you've deduced based on what I've stated regarding my vehicle? To my understanding based on what I've been reading, FRM2 did not start shipping on vehicles until prod date of March 2007. While I do have an 07 vehicle, it was produced in 06. The one thing that I'm unsure of is if the prior owner had replaced it with FRM2 or 3 at some point, considering they changed prod date in the VO. ncsexpert and inpa both seem to indicate FRM1 (FRM_87) but could they be wrong? Because again, I definitely had welcome/follow me home lighting before this, which are claimed not to work on the FRM1. Unless I did it wrong, I believe I have already default coded it but I'm wondering if it's not the original, does it default to the car it came from? Or my own cars default?

[e90yyc]

Originally Posted by Gintoki

All E92s came with FRM2 or is that just something you've deduced based on what I've stated regarding my vehicle? To my understanding based on what I've been reading, FRM2 did not start shipping on vehicles until prod date of March 2007. While I do have an 07 vehicle, it was produced in 06. The one thing that I'm unsure of is if the prior owner had replaced it with FRM2 or 3 at some point, considering they changed prod date in the VO. ncsexpert and inpa both seem to indicate FRM1 (FRM_87) but could they be wrong? Because again, I definitely had welcome/follow me home lighting before this, which are claimed not to work on the FRM1. Unless I did it wrong, I believe I have already default coded it but I'm wondering if it's not the original, does it default to the car it came from? Or my own cars default?

Just to remove as much doubt as possible, what’s the last 7 digits of your VIN?

ptpending definitely knows his stuff and makes a great point about relying on RealOEM for prod date changeovers. That said, it was my understanding—and I might be totally wrong here—that E92 didn’t follow the same “schedule” as E90 when it came to fitment of FRM modules. Rather than guess on this I will check and see what your car should have had from the factory. Edit: Think I’m wrong here. Likely thinking of some other lighting-related difference between E90/E92. Not sure what…

The most reliable method to determine what’s actually fitted is to pull the listing of all control modules using INPA. I know you mentioned INPA showing FRM_87, but did you pull all the details or just conclude based on the header on your screen when you’ve accessed that module?

It sounds like the PO definitely tinkered with the car. The Google tells me that #0909 may be relevant to CIC retrofit, so perhaps that explains why the VO contained that string.

Regardless, if you have welcome lights then you do not have FRM1. (Edit: Am I wrong here? I thought that NFRM did NOT support welcome lights. Period. Full stop.) Likely you have FRM2. IIRC, retrofitting FRM3 is not a direct swap and involves repinning connectors. That said, if the PO retrofit CIC then I’m sure he had the ability to retrofit FRM3. I don’t think that’s what you have though.

To be clear, follow-me-home lighting is different than welcome lighting. If you did in fact have follow-me-home lighting, then you have FRM3. (Another edit: Am I wrong here too? Is it possible to code follow-me-home with FRM2!?)

First step here is to determine your factory module. Pull the module ID page from INPA and post here. Also provide last 7 of your VIN please.

Once we know that, we can get into the default coding .

[Gintoki]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

Just to remove as much doubt as possible, what’s the last 7 digits of your VIN?

ptpending definitely knows his stuff and makes a great point about relying on RealOEM for prod date changeovers. That said, it was my understanding—and I might be totally wrong here—that E92 didn’t follow the same “schedule” as E90 when it came to fitment of FRM modules. Rather than guess on this I will check and see what your car should have had from the factory.

The most reliable method to determine what’s actually fitted is to pull the listing of all control modules using INPA. I know you mentioned INPA showing FRM_87, but did you pull all the details or just conclude based on the header on your screen when you’ve accessed that module?

It sounds like the PO definitely tinkered with the car. The Google tells me that #0909 may be relevant to CIC retrofit, so perhaps that explains why the VO contained that string.

Regardless, if you have welcome lights then you do not have FRM1. Likely you have FRM2. IIRC, retrofitting FRM3 is not a direct swap and involves repinning connectors. That said, if the PO retrofit CIC then I’m sure he had the ability to retrofit FRM3. I don’t think that’s what you have though.

To be clear, follow-me-home lighting is different than welcome lighting. If you did in fact have follow-me-home lighting, then you have FRM3.

First step here is to determine your factory module. Pull the module ID page from INPA and post here. Also provide last 7 of your VIN please.

Once we know that, we can get into the default coding .

Here's a link to some photos I took during my lunch. From inpa and ncsexpert

View post on imgur.com

Last 7 of VIN V72105T (or PV72105 if following how its formatted on some screens within inpa)

As far as CIC goes, isn't that navigation with the screen? It's possible they had it but I def have the no screen dash. I guess they could have saved the old one and re-installed it when selling.

As far as I understand it, follow me home is just the inverse scenario to welcome lights? keeps your driveway lit until you lock the car? Mine used to light walking towards the car and unlocking, and then also lit when closing the door and walking away until I lock it (maybe even a few moment after, don't recall that part for sure).

One more thing of note, in one of the photos I provided, you can see there is no vin tied to the FRM in the user information field screen

[e90yyc]

Will take a look shortly. Wanted to correct myself on something I said earlier: Not so sure the E92 received FRM2 earlier than the E90. Maybe I’m confusing some other lighting-related differences…?

Anyway, will update my posts later to remove that info. Thanks for sending these pics!

Update:

Man, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for sure… I’m fairly certain I was wrong on some of what I said earlier about welcome lights not being possible with FRM1. Perhaps I’m thinking of angel eyes as DRL? Christ I dunno, ha…

In any case, it sure looks like you have FRM1. To the best of my knowledge, the empty VIN field shouldn’t matter.

What I would suggest is to fix the prod date in your VO and then code it to CAS and FRM. Once you’ve done that, default-code your FRM and see what happens. The issues you’re having related to seatbelt handover and lack of window lowering for entry/exit strike me as symptoms of incorrect coding. I can’t see how those wouldn’t be enabled by default from the factory, so the only thing I can think of here is that the issue relates to the prod date in your VO…

Sounds like I’ve been wrong before haha. I did some quick searching and indeed many talk about it being impossible to code welcome lights with FRM1, but then I found another post where someone provided a list of parameters to modify to accomplish this… Will update when I have some time.

Assuming you do indeed have FRM1, don’t expect welcome lights to work without further coding. Also, make sure your headlight switch is in Auto or ON position. Supposedly that can impact whether welcome lights work…

[Gintoki]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

Will take a look shortly. Wanted to correct myself on something I said earlier: Not so sure the E92 received FRM2 earlier than the E90. Maybe I’m confusing some other lighting-related differences…?

Anyway, will update my posts later to remove that info. Thanks for sending these pics!

Update:

Man, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for sure… I’m fairly certain I was wrong on some of what I said earlier about welcome lights not being possible with FRM1. Perhaps I’m thinking of angel eyes as DRL? Christ I dunno, ha…

In any case, it sure looks like you have FRM1. To the best of my knowledge, the empty VIN field shouldn’t matter.

What I would suggest is to fix the prod date in your VO and then code it to CAS and FRM. Once you’ve done that, default-code your FRM and see what happens. The issues you’re having related to seatbelt handover and lack of window lowering for entry/exit strike me as symptoms of incorrect coding. I can’t see how those wouldn’t be enabled by default from the factory, so the only thing I can think of here is that the issue relates to the prod date in your VO…

Sounds like I’ve been wrong before haha. I did some quick searching and indeed many talk about it being impossible to code welcome lights with FRM1, but then I found another post where someone provided a list of parameters to modify to accomplish this… Will update when I have some time.

Assuming you do indeed have FRM1, don’t expect welcome lights to work without further coding. Also, make sure your headlight switch is in Auto or ON position. Supposedly that can impact whether welcome lights work…

So at this point, based on what I've shown so far, there is no shadow of a doubt that it's anything other then FRM1? The reason I'm asking is just to make sure that inpa/ncsexpert are not being told that it is such, but rather are drawing this conclusion based on the device identifying itself to them as that, in a hard coded manner that cannot be changed via myself or a prior owner messing with coding?

As far as the prod date is concerned, I set it to #0906 a few days ago and was finally able to interact with FRM. Prior to this, I would fa write and sg codieren to CAS to remove $524 (it didn't exist in VO at the time even though my hardware was def adaptive, so I assume they tried to fix the error themselves), also added $522 and it would succeed in writing/codieren to CAS but it would never interact at all with NFRM (what it was labeled when production date was #0909). NFRM would always fail with an error stating codierindex 33 or something like that and the adaptive error would remain.

Once I changed to prod date in VO i finally managed to fa write and and sg codeieren to both modules (CAS, and FRM) and the error cleared. This is when the belt, window and light issues all started. I had adjusted nothing other than adding $522 and changing to #0906.

After this I may have made a mistake when I accidentally hit program car in another programming attempt the next day. That being said, I had actually tried programming back to stock via processing ecu (in factory profile ncsexpert) and just running sg coderien for both CAS and FRM a number of times but that did nothing.

Lastly, I checked the WORK directory and see than the man file is empty, but the trc file is not. I was thinking of emptying it and trying but didn't want to risk messing something up beyond repair.

Once I'm off work I will edit this post with my full VO list.
Edit:
#0906
$1CA
$205
$240
$249
$2K9
$2VB
$403
$459
$497
$4AB
$520
$521
$522
$534
$544
$563
$5DS
$645
$663
$693
$697
$6FL
$818
$823
$845
$850
$853
$876
$925
$992
%0668
&LCD3
*PH77
-B070
-EWS4

[Gintoki]

Just an update, I was able to make a small amount of progress before my laptop died. Used Google Translate to find belt in german and then loaded trc in coding tool and was able to find the option for it. switched it to active and coded to FRM in ncs. I now have the belt issue resolved. Trying to tackle windows next. Ran translate on "window" and am searching through all the options available in the FSW_PSW file. Found a few that could be relevant but this one seems to be the most promising

FENSTERHEBER_FAHRZEUGTYP
wert_01

WINDOW REGULATOR_VEHICLE TYPE
value_01

Something tells me value 1 isn't the coupe lol

Edit:

I was looking through the VO codes from bottom to top and I struck gold early on lol. PH77 is the code for e90 328i sedan
Checked on RealOEM for my actual vehicle code and it's WB33. Going to change it tomorrow during my lunch and see how it goes.

View post on imgur.com

[e90yyc]

Thanks for the update.

Before you spend any more time trying to translate stuff, download NCS Dummy. Such a timesaver and makes coding exponentially easier. The translations for most items are right in the app.

And yup––the presence of that string in the VO is almost certainly the cause of those two problems .

Here's a list of common option codes if you didn't see this already.

Didn't even think that model type would have been coded differently than coupe—good find there.

Would just start by default coding with the correct VO and then see where that gets you. Possible you don't need to touch anything else. I'm also curious what happens with the welcome lights...

BTW: Confirmed your ZB number is definitely FRM1.

[Gintoki]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

Thanks for the update.

Before you spend any more time trying to translate stuff, download NCS Dummy. Such a timesaver and makes coding exponentially easier. The translations for most items are right in the app.

Thank you for coming along lol, definitely helps to have others looking at it as well. Now, as far as NCS Dummy goes, I did see it had the translations but by the time I got to it my laptop battery was at 11% and I didn't have enough time to mess with it and understand how to operate it. Funny enough, I find ncsexpert easier to use at this point.

And yup––the presence of that string in the VO is almost certainly the cause of those two problems .

I'm hoping our thinking is correct there and the car just forgot it was a coupe haha. I'm seriously starting to think prior owner had made all these changes that somehow got stored in memory but they never managed to actually code them to be active. Once I managed to actually code the FRM, every dumb thing they set hit it all at once.

Here's a list of common option codes if you didn't see this already.

I will give it another look. I ran across it when searching for codes but ended up navigating away quickly when ctrl+f did not result in any match for the first code I searched

Didn't even think that model type would have been coded differently than coupe—good find there.

Would just start by default coding with the correct VO and then see where that gets you. Possible you don't need to touch anything else. I'm also curious what happens with the welcome lights...

BTW: Confirmed your ZB number is definitely FRM1.

I figured it would make sense for it to have a different model code since they do have differentiators as far as features go. What solidified that thinking was the immediate change that affected multiple coupe related features at once.

I have looked into stock/default coding the car and thought I had done it but maybe not since it's made a mess of things. Don't you just clear the man file and then load the factory profile in ncs, then select ecu and sg codieren? I've done that many times, along with doing fa write, prior to sg codieren. I think i did it for CAS, FRM and KOMBI

Sucks that it is FRM1, was hoping they did actually upgrade it, and thought that they may have since I know for the past 2 months them halos have definitely been coming on when I unlock the car and when I lock it walking away. Really wonder how the hell that was working....

Edit: If you still have the link to the post where the guy got it working on FRM1, can you post it? Thanks!

[Leucosticte]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

Thanks for the update.

Before you spend any more time trying to translate stuff, download NCS Dummy. Such a timesaver and makes coding exponentially easier. The translations for most items are right in the app.

And yup––the presence of that string in the VO is almost certainly the cause of those two problems .

Here's a list of common option codes if you didn't see this already.

Didn't even think that model type would have been coded differently than coupe—good find there.

Would just start by default coding with the correct VO and then see where that gets you. Possible you don't need to touch anything else. I'm also curious what happens with the welcome lights...

BTW: Confirmed your ZB number is definitely FRM1.

So the best thing that I can guess is that despite early E92s having FRM1 they have some FRM2 features. For example, my car is the same production date as OP and it has welcome lights. However, it does not have AHL2 which as far as I know is an FRM2+ feature.

If we look at coding files E92 FRM1s seem to have their own variant: FRM_FA.C21

The .C21 is the revision, it's the last revision for FRM1s before they switched over to FRM2, which is why I think it has some features of FRM2 but does not have others. I guess they wanted the E92s to have welcome lights compared to their sedan counterpart or something, I'm not really sure why this is. As far as I know .C21 is only found on E92s so it could have it's own special module which is probably what caused the initial confusion in the first place.

[e90yyc]

Leucosticte Thanks for sharing that. Great info.

Indeed the FRM modules are specific to E90/91 and E92/93, so perhaps that explains why.

Gintoki Will reply tomorrow.

[Gintoki]

Leucosticte is into something there. Perhaps our FRM module is the module that was the basis for FRM2, minus some additions.

Happy to report that coding WB33 into the VO immediately fixed all issues. Windows are now aware of their frameless status, belt extender is functional and welcome lights are back up and running. For the moment they're enabled for the halos but I do see an option in the TRC file to enable for high and low beams as well. I haven't tested it with those options enabled though since I'm happy with just the halos. There are settings for duration as well.

Thank you all for your input/insight!

[e90yyc]

Happy to help despite probably making things worse at times with my lack of understanding of differences between sedan and coupe .

Glad she’s all better!

[Gintoki]

Originally Posted by e90yyc

Happy to help despite probably making things worse at times with my lack of understanding of differences between sedan and coupe .

Glad she’s all better!

Naw you didn't make anything worse haha.

Thank you! hopefully this thread helps another with my same scenario as well.