[Harry@Piekarnia]

I had a problem with the xenon lights (passenger side working sometimes and sometimes not) which the dealer decided to fix by changing the control unit. However they say that they used a BMW control unit and not a MINI control unit because the MINI one sometimes cooks the xenons and the BMW one does not. All seems a bit odd to me.

The only reason I'm asking is that the daytime lights option is different with the BMW unit. With the old MINI unit you turned the key and the lights came on. If you wanted the lights on when the engine was off you switched the lights on with the indicator/lights stalk. With the BMW control unit it appears that to have daytime lights you switch the indicator /lights stalk on and then the lights come on when you turn the key in the ignition and go off when you turn the engine off. You can't have the lights on unless the key is in the ignition lock and turned. I'd prefer to have things back the way they were. Anybody got any ideas?

[SleeperService]

Yep... This and your other problem (alarm indication) are related to the country code that the dealer used to code your body control unit, and the different behaviours stem from different legislation in different territories. Get them to check firstly that they did actually code the new control unit to your car when they fitted it, and secondly that the country code that they used was the same as the car left the factory with. It's possible that, when the BMW BC1 was rolled out, the default behaviour for Poland was changed from that for the old BC1, but I doubt it somehow.

[Harry@Piekarnia]

Thanks for the reply! I assume that the BC1 is the body control unit that you mentioned(?) What exactly do you mean by "code" the unit? Do you happen to know what the process of coding the unit involves?

Sorry to ask extra questions but the computer unit they have at the dealer is in German and I don't speak a word of that!

[SleeperService]

No worries :-)

Yes, the BC1 is the body control unit that they would have replaced. Coding it involves looking up the specifications, and from that generating the binary dataset that gets uploaded into it, to tell it precisely how to operate. It's basically setting the preferences, but it's quite coarse.

As far as I'm aware, if the technician is following the instructions on their computer precisely, then the BC1 should get coded automatically at the appropriate point in the installation. They should be able to trigger it manually as well, but I'd need someone with more experience than me with a GT1 (that's the hand-held diagnostic computer the dealers use) to know exactly how. Any ideas (if you're reading this), here2help?