1st Gen R53 Cooper S My 2005 R53 Daily Driver build thread

30 miles on ice and snow today. Traction control is far too aggressive, but I still only turned it off a few times when the car just didn't want to go at all

As for programming - I assume that is all done with NCS Expert. Was going to buy a cable and the software a while back. Read about some things you can do with it. Coding examples I saw looked like it is all in German, but that's fine, since it is my first language.

 

snow here for a few days before the side roads were cleared. With the new BF Goodrich all season rubber, the car works quite well on the white stuff, even with the TC on. Just drive it right and it won't kick in too frequently. I am glad I didn't buy winter tires - given I have driven a total of 250 miles since Dec 23, the last time I got gas, the expense of mounting/unmounting and the tires themselves would not have made much sense.

Getting a little warmer again today and tomorrow, so maybe it'll get a quick bath. I've managed to keep it out of the worst salt so far, so the car will likely still appear like it never saw salt after this season is over.

 

Snow has become a rare entity even here in the upper Midwest. We used to get 100 inches per winter, but now, if I were to add up what I shoveled so far this season, we may be around 15" max and a lot of that was fluffy light powder.

Last weekend we got the most snow of the season over two days, but as of today, only a fraction of that is still on the ground. 40+F for two days, lots of sun, and we are back to dry salty roads with maybe 2" of snow where no plow has gone. I sold my big Toyota 4x4 and when faced with the choice between Subaru WRX and another Mini R53 as my daily driver to use year round, the choice to go with another Mini was quite easy. I thought I might need proper winter tires, but as stated above, that fat bike with studded winter tires works far better anyway, so that's my new winter situation. Yes, there will be days I wished I had a big old 4x4, but the cost/depreciation of such a monster just don't make sense given our changing climate. I also don't plant to spend too many more years around these parts. The mountains in the west is where I want to live, and depending on where that may be, I may look at that Subaru again.

 

Just ordered a cable and NCS Expert plus other software collection. Not for traction control, but to disable the silly bulb check the car does on first key turn (and later I guess as well). The goal is to reprogram a few things like how the car unlocks and disable bulb checks that make LEDs flicker. It may even let me do something about that seat occupancy sensor so I can put the Sparcos into the dark silver car this year..

 

Quick update, as we are still getting snow, two of the Minis are still in hibernation. The blue daily made it through winter just fine. Two tanks of gas is all I needed.

Last night I installed those Blind spot mirrors - https://www.ecstuning.com/b-helix-parts/blind-spot-mirror-set/mr-mir50a~hlx/

Not the greatest quality as already pointed out by somebody in this thread. One of them separated when I tried topush it on the motor mount. Back to the shop, preheat glass with heat gun, hot glue gun and fixed it. The blue tint takes some getting used to, but before I spend double to get the Euro OEM mirror glass.

The field of view is significantly improved, especially driver side. Will post some image soon.

I've spent a few weekends messing with NCS Export and other software, installing cable and drivers on Windows 10 (not for the faint of heart with software written for win XP 32 bit). Cable then needed some soldering to make it the version for pre-2007 BMWs. I am starting to understand why so few R53 owners mess with this software. But I now have far too much time in to give up. Some success so far with reading my entire car settings to file for a backup, but am not ready to edit and write back to the ECU until I can verify my software is complete and working. Some R50/53 files for individual modules appear to be missing, or I just don't understand it enough. It's messy, and I don't want to brick my car's ECU just because I am impatient, all to get some flicker out of LEDs and maybe change a few other settings.

 

My son is going to begin some work on the red car in 4 weeks after he gets home from college. His room is filled with parts and new tools (welder!) that are waiting to complete his install of a new interior (ditch all the red surfaces with new door cards and dash parts he got), then we'll likely swap seats with the dark silver car and have the covers of his seats redone with some alcantara in the area where the red cloth has become ugly, then replace the covers on my seats with his. That also will bring heated seats into his Florida spec car. Meanwhile I may go all crazy with weld-in cage and buckets or postpone that until next year.

The daily driver here will get some attention for sure. I still have that weird noise in the rear, even tough I had the rear brakes completely apart. New bearings will be my next move. Also need to address the wonky steering wheel feel when I get into parking lots. Something is not right up front, and it likely is the steering rack, or something in the steering wheel u-joints and bushings. Mostly feel it when it's cold and going slow. Beyond that I'll be ding the engine damper, drop the subframe for ball joints and bushings, etc - pondering he brake system but it's near new and works. Can't make up my mind regarding what to do, although most likely it'll be an R56 update. Anything more than that isn't worth it on that "daily driver'

Fresh image from last fall sunset drive - processed this one yesterday


Mini with the sky on fire

 

Taking this info to my car thread, since it applies more to what I am about to do than the headlight swap thread.

I think I have my NCS Expert software working. Still haven't coded anything on the car, but it all seems to work the same as many others show on youtube. I've read car settings and the module data for the BC1.C05 module that controls light checks, remote control modes, unlock settings, etc. but I want to start with the disabling of the bulb checks that make some of my lights flicker. This is not the kind of flicker while the bulb is lit, but flicker induced by bulb condition checks while NOT lit, causing LEDs to light up briefly like a strobe light.

Here's a video of a German guy with a BMW that has LEDs in the fog lights - the effect is clearly visible here on ignition turned on. The part I learned form this video is that you need to disable both, cold and warm monitoring. Warm does not mean the "bulb is warm" but "the engine is running" - basically, high beams and fog lights with LEDs will blink every few seconds like an ambulance unless you have them turned on. Since you don't want to drive with your high beams on all the time you either stick with halogens or you code out these bulb checks. My HID bulbs in the low beams do not blink, but they are useless in the high beam position.Go to minute 0:40 for the flicker demo in the video



After fixing the cable I bought to work with the older Mini ECU port (solder pins 7 and 8 together) and fighting windows 10 to install .Net 3.5 needed (for NCS Dummy I think), it was several complete installs and uninstalls before I finally got the software work . It was a matter of having the proper versions of R50 "Daten" files in all places where they are used, and that is several folders in three programs.

I am still learning what I can do with it and from here on it is baby steps to actually code parts of the ECU. First I'll change one tiny thing I can easily check, then one code change at a time until I get more comfortable, especially with rolling things back to what it was before. There's really not a hell of a lot one can change to improve the car from what it is, but there are a few annoying things I want to get rid of, such as the 2 minute auto lock after you unlock and then not open a door. I want all doors to unlock on the first key press on the remote, plus a few other changes. More on that when I actually do code them.

 

I haven't seen anything that would suggest the computer was different for the early cars, although there are many versions of these modules in the software, as features did change over time.

Would assume that these bulb checks existed from the early cars on, so 2002 will blink as well if you put LEDs in there. High beam and low beam, unless it was an HID car and then the low beams are disabled from the check, I assume to protect the ignitors. On my HID car the low beam check is disabled, all other bulbs are on.

The computer in my car does check almost all outside bulbs, and there's even a check for interior bulbs, which may explain why my boot light flickers (but none of the others. I am guessing the boot light is hooked to a rear brake or position light check circuit).

High beams, low beams if not HID, position lights, blinkers, brake lights except for the third one up high, fog lights and rear fog light if exist, as well as license plate light are all on the cold/warm checklist of the computer. Put in LEDs and they will flicker. I always wondered why the LED lights I got for my rear plate from Outmotoring were flickering, even though they were a "drop in replacement" - forgot to tell me that little detail about the computer in the product description...