Matthew Ashton

As the rear parking sensors aren’t disabled I’d get in touch with The electrics manufacturer, ECS in the U.K. maybe? Do you have a reverse camera? If so do you get a tow hitch symbol on screen when in reverse?

That’s the state of the economy. The F10/F11 cars depreciated less quickly than the G3x cars. Then factor in the £450 road tax for the 2nd to 6th renewal on cars over £40k and the mess that is Brexit screwing us and this is what we’re left with. My car depreciated by half in its first year and yet again by around 18% in the 2nd. I’m happy though as I’ll be keeping the car longer term.

There are multiple DAB aerials with one being in the shark fin on the roof. On the F11 there is another on the left side rear window and not the tailgate rear window. This differs from the F10 where one of the DAB aerials is a circuit on the rear window.

All depends where in the country you are and whether you’ll be driving on snow covered roads. Rear wheel drive cars are notorious for getting stuck in those conditions. Until last year I’ve also never had winter tyres on a car and we never got stuck. But then... we live in the South East, it rarely snows and when it does it is for a day or so and in those conditions the roads are so well gritted that it is a none event. Last year and now with an xDrive 6 GT I decided on a second set of winter wheels - 19” - for our skiing trips away in the alps. Mainly because finding snow chains for my 20” summer wheels was a struggle and a bit of a compromise for us.

The sensor is a 2 stage affair in the F10/11 cars. Once it wears through the first sensor wire it will trigger a green warning - this will need happening in the next xx miles. Once it wears through the seconds wire it shows a red warning and the mileage to replace will suddenly drop again.

Dave, that’s right re mudflap using existing screws and rivets but they are also attached with a strong double sided tape. As your car spends most of its life stuck to the garage floor like mine (haven’t seen mine in 4 weeks and it’ll be at least 5 by the time I’m home from India), I doubt you will have much to clean out

Sadly I don’t have a parts cleaner and I just soaked the manifold in the EP24R for an hour before I let rip with the bottle brush. I agree with regular oil changes but paying more for fuel is a stretch as I just don’t believe the claims.

Sorry, looks like I possibly got it wrong. For Route maps you should still be able to get an FSC code. It is later maps where the key is embedded. So it looks like that link for map downloads will work and you’ll need to do another search on eBay for the FSC code. The link you shared don’t specify ROUTE map FSC.

How vPower is going to keep the intake cleaner, I’ll never understand. The reason they clock up is that the EGR and Crankcase ventilation recirculate back through the intake manifold. So that is exhaust soot and oil vapour from the crankcase lining the inside of the intake. I cleaned my manifold and sure it was a messy job but for a few hours of my time, using a pressure washer and some degreaser it was like new.

This is industry wide and not just BMW. My first Opel Kadett back in the 80s had its brake fluid replaced as scheduled every 2 or 3 years and I’ve happily done it ever since. No moisture in the system so no corroded brake pipes and nice coloured brake fluid keeping me safe. Maybe not necessary but for peanuts in cost I’ll keep on doing it.

No, as mentioned, your car does not use an FSC code in the traditional sense so there is no Lifetime code available. The authorisation code is now embedded within the Map file so no one can generate the code for you as was the case with the older headunits.

To round off the story about generating/Obtaining/Purchasing codes and maps for SatNav updates and the various methods: Using Copie_scr is only valid with an early car with a CIC or Business SatNav with “Premium“ or “Move“ maps. Extracting 1B or DE files from your car using ESYS and going through the DIY generating process works on: Cars with: SatNAv Business or SatNav Professional with the following Map Versions: CIC - “Premium”; NBT - “Next“; Business - “Move” Anything beyond 2014 will more than likely have either SatNav Business/Entry_Nav with ”Route” Maps or SatNav Pro NBT EVO with “EVO“ Maps. There is no DIY option to generate codes. Updates for these can sometimes be found on eBay or you need to go down the official route of buying through the BMW website. BMW change the authorisation mechanism and now embeds the authorisation code within the map data for the later versions.

Yours is a variation of the NBT system. And yes, this USB extract method will not work on your car.

I assume your car’s software level has been updated by BMW at some point in its life otherwise the new maps would allow 7 digits to be input but would still only process the first 5 digits. I had this back in 2012 and had to pay BMW to update the cars software before I could fully use all 7 digits on my then newly updated maps.

Note, this method will only retrieve 1B files which relate to CIC and NOT NBT pro nav head units. Once you have retrieved the 1B file - it will need to be converted and then the FSC code generated via a generator program .