I have notice the antenna mast on the Mini has developed an aerodynamic set. That is near the base there is a slight bend due to wind loading at high speed. It is not bad at all and has no negative effect on radio reception. Only now when the boot hatch is open the rear spoiler now barely come in contact with the antenna mast. When new there was just may be 15 mm clearance.
I have always love the Mini's appearance with the roof mount antenna. Back when the R53 Mini was first launch there were very few cars with roof mount antenna, but now they are quite common on other cars. I thought I can rotate the mast 180 degrees and let the wind do the job slowly. I was unsure if the mast just unscrews so I consult the photos on the web. I proceed to unscrew it after thinking that I can just put in a thin washer to take up the slack after unscrewing it 1/2 turn. As with most things on the Mini it was very well designed. There are plastic serrated feature on the mast base as well antenna base the mast screws into so the mast does not unscrew accidentally. I decided to just leave it alone rather than try straighten out the bend, which I fear would weaken the section.
I've been wanting to take a photo of the new gauges illuminated at night to show how close they look against the original instrument gauge dials. Unfortunately while the light colors are very close the image sensor and lens of the iPhone camera end up with very different colors. I have little doubt that with DSLR the result would be very similar unless color filter is used. Come to think of it, I have a set of color filter samples that I can play with.
the pinky red hue of the small gauges belongs to a stripclub, LOL
The T/D-CAN cable arrived. I tried install the BMW NCS Expert suite but only to result in non-sensible error messages. There were other problems including the program froze. My first installation was using the CD that came with the cable. I should have known better.
I then decided to try the one on the NAM forum. That was much easier but still there were some hiccups with missing files. Spent more time searching the forum and looking for the missing last file I thought I have the problem slicked.
No so. I launched INPA but it reports Battery: Off and Ignition: Off. I close the program, turned off and then on the ignition and relaunch INPA and it just froze. I had the wit to reboot the computer and see what happen. Sure enough no INPA behaving normally but I am still seeing Battery: Off and Ignition: Off.
Regarding the two K-line pins (7 and 8) on the ODB II connector of the cable. I first looked to see if pin-8 on the receptacle on the Min is populated. Pin-7 should as it is a defined pin for K-line. Pin-8 is OE optional and is the second K-line on BMW depends on the build year range. Oddly in my R53 both pins are populated. Still it does not tell you much except the increase possibility my Mini happen to use pin-8, or both.
pin-7 and pin-8 of the OBD II receptacle in the Mini are populated
I also open up the connector of the cable and verified that pin-8 is not connected. While it has a breakout PCB obscuring the connector and I cannot see the traces on the other side, I managed to verify it.
By now I am willing to go ahead and short pin-7 and pin-8 of the ODB II connector of the cable.
Sure enough once that is done, INPA reports Battery: On and Ignition: On. This is good sign so I went and try NCS Expert. Selected the R50 chassis and it came back with this screen:
This is good sign so I went and try NCS Expert. I was able to read the BC1 module.
this is the retrieved module trace file
A few hours later. I uploaded the few changes into the BC1 module of the Mini. The front fog lights and the rear fog light are all working! I also set the emergency flasher to European, which has a periodic double flashes.
the rear fog light (the single red light above the center mount exhaust) is now functional
the front fog lights (the two lowest lights) are also functional (independent of the rear fog light)
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