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I am not responsible for any damages or modifications of any type to your vehicle. This site is for informational purposes only!

 
Thursday January 24, 2002

Visual Remote Entry Confirmation

Abstract - The BMW E46 comes with remote entry; however, without the alarm, the car will not blink when you unlock and lock the car. After spending 40K on a car, it should at least have visual remote entry confirmation!

Purchase - None

Parts - None

Installations - The installation needs to be done with a BMW diagnostic computer terminal. These machines are at least 5K, so usually only BMW dealers have the equipment to perform the conversion. I had my car upgraded at Herb Chambers BMW in Boston, MA. Usually, dealers will charge you one hour of labor, but if you request it along with a regular scheduled service appointment, it is usually free.

1) Have your dealer hook up the shop computer (MODIC) to the car.
2) Go to the "Anti-Theft" activation section.
3) Activate the alarm, but uncheck the "DWA" option.

After this is done, your corner light should blink once when locked and twice when unlocked remotely. In addition, the clown nose will blink when car is locked just as if an alarm was present. Contrary to the previous version of the FAQ, there are no permanent fault codes that are generated for the latest E46's by programming this option.
http://www.e46fanatics.com/faq/faqs.php

Impressions - There are two important reasons why this upgrade is so important. First, you are confident that you locked your car. One blink means locked, two blinks means unlocked. Second that active alarm LED is activated. When the factory alarm is armed, the red active alarm LED blinks. As far as burglars are concerned, they think the car has an alarm. The purpose of an alarm is to deter burglars; and if they wanted to break into your car, its not hard to stop them. This conversion provides you with the activation of the RED active alarm LED which is 80% of the usefulness of the factory alarm.

Conclusions -  All I have to say is I never have to worry if I locked my car correctly. It is hard to tell whether the car is locked or unlocked just by audible signals. Now you don't have to listen for those clicks. If you don't have a factory alarm, you must get this upgrade. Its basically free and a critical upgrade.

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