Aux heating - E39 5 Series

[jamoor]

I got this enabled today in my car

Was on business in Koln, and I was staying accross the road from a BMW dealer, this has always bugged me, so I went in and after finding someone who speaks English, showed them my OBC manual.

They then reprogrammed the module with I think the European software, for €58 or so.



I can now set it on a timer or manually turn it on and off, result

You should be able to get this done at your local dealer, in theory, personally I had no success.

[Neil.D]

Does the car actually have an additional heater? Otherwise how else does it work? I thought it was an optional extra.
Good timing on getting it done though. I'd love my screen defrosted every morning.

[jamoor]

Neil.D said:

Does the car actually have an additional heater? Otherwise how else does it work? I thought it was an optional extra.
Good timing on getting it done though. I'd love my screen defrosted every morning.

Of course, all E39 diesel models do, its in the passenger footwell.

[Deva Link]

There a thread about it here - seems if you have the high end OBC then it can just be enabled as per the OP.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?f=72&...

[jamoor]

Actually, does anyone know what the deal is with the timer? How does it know weather or not to turn the heater on, or does it do it when it drops to 5 deg?

[Huff]

The heater circuit in E34/E39 use an auxiliary water pump (at the heater valve block) to ensure feed to the heater core from the main engine coolant circuit. I thought this was basicallly the same as the E34 OBC functionality..? (happy to be corrected)

In the E34 with full OBC anyway, it allows use of residual engine heat to demist / run heater to a preset time etc ( or, for example, you can set the OBC to run the fan at set times to vent hot air on summer days at a single set time) and I'm sure the E39 does at least this...