stephenperry

I do my own servicing and recently bought a copy of CarSoft 6.5 along with an interface off eBay with the intention of replacing my trusty Draper service reset tool. Finally got a chance to use it at the weekend after performing a brake fluid change and Oil Service, it worked as it should and reset the service lights and brake fluid light as anticipated.

Out of curiousity I scanned for existing fault codes, and found a couple which didn't seem anything major, so I cleared them to see if they would return at a later date.

Now for the fun part.... I found a menu entitled Vehicle Coding E38/E39, which listed settings like KM or Miles, language settings like English (UK), (US) etc. and the bit that I was interested in - "Automatically lock doors when driving". I clicked the button for READ DATA, and it populated the list with incorrect settings - Germany, Litres, KM etc. I set them to the correct values, along with the box for auto-door locking and clicked the button to WRITE DATA....

It ran through the process, which took a couple of minutes, apparently successfully, and said that I should turn the ignition off for 10 seconds, which I did.... turning it back on.... I got a message EEPROM-KI in the OBC part of the cluster and the following symptoms...

• Rev counter flicks up momentarily when engine starts (like an electrical "blip") then drops to 0 and does not move at all.
  
  MPG counter is completely bananas - twitchy and jumps around all over the place, completely off the scale at times.
  
  OBC button is completely inoperative, no display on OBC (although CHECK CONTROL OK appears when pressing the right hand stalk, and the cluster sweep test performs as expected), no display on OBC/radio panel either (although the radio display and buttons work there are no OBC functions available or displayed)
  
  Speedometer reads too fast for the road speed - an indicated 39mph is a true 30mph (verified by GPS)
  
  Driveability, engine temperature guage and fuel guage all appear normal and unaffected so far, as does the mileage counter.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I've got bruises from kicking myself so hard Question is, what should I do now? I tried the cluster reset procedure and it didn't make any difference, I've also tried rerunning the CarSoft procedure a few times, again no difference, I've also tried disconnecting the battery and leaving it overnight, but it's still the same.

I've got it booked into the local BMW dealer next week, but since it's an Alpina cluster (with the 200mph clocks) would that make a difference to what they could or couldn't do to fix it? Does it sound fixable or does it sound like I'll need a new cluster? Can anyone recommend a company who've dealt with these problems before?

A very worried B10 3.3 owner....