Quote:
Originally Posted by JHZR2
If I were to buy an ICOM and pay the $30 for a day's access to BMW OSS, I'd essentially get option 5, right?
Downside Is what? Having to pay a fee to do anything (e.g. Brake fluid flush abs activation)? The $$$ icom unit (assuming I get a genuine one)?
Upside is that I could diagnose, code and update anything and everything on the car, and implement any repairs for any items, right?
I'm somewhat hesitant personally to do a whole lot via unofficial processes, especially since I'd be booting off a mac and haven't kept up with windows sw in many years.
Thanks!
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From what I understand, BMWTools is legitimate freeware which is distributed from BMW Group. ISTA-D (Rheingold) and ISTA-P are NOT. These programs are what dealer techs use so that they don't actually need any knowledge to diagnose and fix a car lol. Commercial shops lease access to these systems like you suggest doing... The versions available on the internet are not for commercial use or distribution. They have been "hacked" to work offline.
I have not bothered to check if making battery setting changes in ISTA actually changes the $VO to match... That is something maybe someone else can confirm. My guess is that if you use an offline version of ISTA, or, you make manual edits to your $VO using winkfp, then BMWs database won't match. It would require quiet a bit of investigative effort on the dealers part to recognize that your current vehicle order ($VO) does not match how the car came off the factory floor.
With that being said, why would the dealer even care? The only thing I can think of is if you are trying to claim warranty work for something and the dealer investigates to find that you manually coded something that caused the problem. However, this is highly unlikely. Further, I've yet to come across any dealer/tech that even has this level of knowledge to come to this conclusion.
ISTA has native K-DCAN support. An actual ICOM connection is only really needed if you're programming the software of a module. That is NOT what is being done here and programming is almost NEVER required for ANYTHING. Not even the dealer bothers updating your programming unless you complain about a specific driveability issue that a software update specifically addresses (like stalling with DCT).
What we are doing here is editing some settings (variables in the software). Cars with iDrive can change some window and light settings without even needing to load up a program to do it... Also, I have programmed every module in my car using a K-DCAN cable (even my media module which took almost 20 hours to complete). It is not advisable though as there is a high risk of data interruption. Using a virtual machine is not an issue for processing coding changes but it does significantly increase the chances of failure of programming with a K-DCAN cable and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you don't bother trying it.