New to forum and first BMW

[AceEngineer]

Hello all

I am a new member of the forum and a first time BMW owner. I just bought a used X5 for my wife’s DD and for trips to Vegas. I got a spectacular deal on a gorgeous 2005 X5 4.4i with 96k miles. The entire car is literally in showroom condition and the exterior has zero damage and like new paint. I have to admit I paid well over KBB, but well worth it. It came with a set of 35% worn winter tires on separate BMW OEM rims. The summer stickies on the car are also only about 40% worn and all eight tires have the BMW star. The seller turned out to be a BMW fanatic that was extremely meticulous about his cars. He passed on to me all the service records since it was new along with the receipt for the 4 new lifetime air springs that were just installed. At 75k the car had new valve guide seals installed by a dealer to the tune of $7500. The seller also gave me a data base from a phone app called ACar that tracks all service together with every fuel stop with gallons and mileage for the last five years; it’s unbelievable how the guy took care of his cars. The deal also included spare belts, air and oil filters with gaskets and new plugs plus various plastic clips that the seller had to replace over the years, so he bought extras. Things like 4 extra clips for the rear sunshades because they break easily and stuff like that. A Bentley service manual was also included. When I crawled under the car, there was not a single sign of an oil leak and the underside had a patina of road dirt indicating the bottom hadn’t been power washed recently to hide a leak. I’ve had the car a week now and have gone over it with a fine tooth comb and the only cosmetic flaws are two small filled chips in the windshield and a 1 inch square tear in the corner of the tint in the tailgate. The seller had told me ahead of time that the panoramic sunroof didn’t open all the way and as it turns out this will be the only repair necessary to return the car to literal showroom condition. I’ve already checked out the price of the parts and the kits for the front and rear roofs run about $500 total. Removing a sunroof is something I have done before and if this is the only repair required it was still a super deal. My son and I have hooked my new X5 to a borrowed BMW factory service tool to check out the car. While we had the tool set up we cleared the transmission and throttle learned behavior and set all the car memory items to our liking. It came with the two original keys and I bought 2 more from china for $15 which we had no trouble programming to the car. We are still trying to figure out if we can get the halo lights to be the daytime driving lights. Anybody out there managed to do this yet? I downloaded a list of available options for the 2005’s and my new/used BMW has every option listed plus a few that must be dealer installed after delivery. The only non-stock thing about the car is the seller had installed Alpine HD display screens in the head rests for the rear seat passengers with a DVD player with remote in the glove box and an IR transmitter for the earphones mounted centered just above the rear hatch.
For those of you who managed to read all of the above and are wondering, I paid $11k even for the car.

AceEngineer

[upallnight]

Originally Posted by AceEngineer

Hello all

I am a new member of the forum and a first time BMW owner. I just bought a used X5 for my wife’s DD and for trips to Vegas. I got a spectacular deal on a gorgeous 2005 X5 4.4i with 96k miles. The entire car is literally in showroom condition and the exterior has zero damage and like new paint. I have to admit I paid well over KBB, but well worth it. It came with a set of 35% worn winter tires on separate BMW OEM rims. The summer stickies on the car are also only about 40% worn and all eight tires have the BMW star. The seller turned out to be a BMW fanatic that was extremely meticulous about his cars. He passed on to me all the service records since it was new along with the receipt for the 4 new lifetime air springs that were just installed. At 75k the car had new valve guide seals installed by a dealer to the tune of $7500. The seller also gave me a data base from a phone app called ACar that tracks all service together with every fuel stop with gallons and mileage for the last five years; it’s unbelievable how the guy took care of his cars. The deal also included spare belts, air and oil filters with gaskets and new plugs plus various plastic clips that the seller had to replace over the years, so he bought extras. Things like 4 extra clips for the rear sunshades because they break easily and stuff like that. A Bentley service manual was also included. When I crawled under the car, there was not a single sign of an oil leak and the underside had a patina of road dirt indicating the bottom hadn’t been power washed recently to hide a leak. I’ve had the car a week now and have gone over it with a fine tooth comb and the only cosmetic flaws are two small filled chips in the windshield and a 1 inch square tear in the corner of the tint in the tailgate. The seller had told me ahead of time that the panoramic sunroof didn’t open all the way and as it turns out this will be the only repair necessary to return the car to literal showroom condition. I’ve already checked out the price of the parts and the kits for the front and rear roofs run about $500 total. Removing a sunroof is something I have done before and if this is the only repair required it was still a super deal. My son and I have hooked my new X5 to a borrowed BMW factory service tool to check out the car. While we had the tool set up we cleared the transmission and throttle learned behavior and set all the car memory items to our liking. It came with the two original keys and I bought 2 more from china for $15 which we had no trouble programming to the car. We are still trying to figure out if we can get the halo lights to be the daytime driving lights. Anybody out there managed to do this yet? I downloaded a list of available options for the 2005’s and my new/used BMW has every option listed plus a few that must be dealer installed after delivery. The only non-stock thing about the car is the seller had installed Alpine HD display screens in the head rests for the rear seat passengers with a DVD player with remote in the glove box and an IR transmitter for the earphones mounted centered just above the rear hatch.
For those of you who managed to read all of the above and are wondering, I paid $11k even for the car.

AceEngineer

You may be able to "Code" the halo into DRL if they are factory halo and not some cheap rice out halo bought on eBay or Amazon.

[AceEngineer]

They are factory halos. That's what we were trying to do, code the halos to be the daytime drivers, but we found no indication in the settings that the halos can be programmed. I know we were in the right spot, because the TIS menu included settings for the "security" model X5 which is supposedly only accessible by the factory. Did you know that you can set the headlights to blink alternately? It's part of the high security model settings.
Do you know where to access the halo lights control?

AceEngineer

[upallnight]

Originally Posted by AceEngineer

They are factory halos. That's what we were trying to do, code the halos to be the daytime drivers, but we found no indication in the settings that the halos can be programmed. I know we were in the right spot, because the TIS menu included settings for the "security" model X5 which is supposedly only accessible by the factory. Did you know that you can set the headlights to blink alternately? It's part of the high security model settings.
Do you know where to access the halo lights control?

AceEngineer

It should be in the LKM module.

[crystalworks]

Yep, should be in LKM. That's where Carly reads it. I wired my cheap riced out ebay halos to do the same thing you are going for. Factory halos have terrible brightness due to the light pipe design being only able to transfer limited lighting around the rings.

So right now, when do your halos turn on? Only after turning on the headlights or sidemarkers?

[AceEngineer]

Thanks we'll look there the next time we have the car hooked up to a tool. It may be a while, my wife now has taken possession of the car and decided to keep it. The halos come on with the low beams (HIDs) and stay on with the high beams right now. The DRL's were the high beams without the HIDs lit, when we took possession of the car. We turned that off so there are no DRLs now.

AceEngineer

[bcredliner]

Welcome! Sounds like a great buy.

[AceEngineer]

It got better and better. You won't believe this. After my son and I finished the programming stuff we gave the car to my wife. Yesterday was 1 week from the day we took possession of the car and I was so tickled with the purchase I sent the seller an email thanking him for the care he lavished on the car and for selling it to me and that if he ever sells another car to please call me. As an aside FYI in the email I told him that we had diagnosed the sun roof and that it required a rebuild, but I figured to do the work and the rebuild kit was only $349. I closed telling thanks again and how much I loved the car. You won't believe it, but he emailed me back and offered to send me a $200 check for "his share of the sunroof repair", I was floored. What did I do to deserve such karma! Of course I emailed back to him, No Way!, that it would make me feel like a thief. I told him I was more than satisfied with our deal and don't forget to call me when he sells another car.
Just Unbelievable!!

AceEngineer

[X5only]

Originally Posted by AceEngineer

It got better and better. You won't believe this. After my son and I finished the programming stuff we gave the car to my wife. Yesterday was 1 week from the day we took possession of the car and I was so tickled with the purchase I sent the seller an email thanking him for the care he lavished on the car and for selling it to me and that if he ever sells another car to please call me. As an aside FYI in the email I told him that we had diagnosed the sun roof and that it required a rebuild, but I figured to do the work and the rebuild kit was only $349. I closed telling thanks again and how much I loved the car. You won't believe it, but he emailed me back and offered to send me a $200 check for "his share of the sunroof repair", I was floored. What did I do to deserve such karma! Of course I emailed back to him, No Way!, that it would make me feel like a thief. I told him I was more than satisfied with our deal and don't forget to call me when he sells another car.
Just Unbelievable!!

AceEngineer

You must have done something very right in your past to get such blessings . Congrats on a great buy.

I have the same year X5. I have tried with NCSExpert to code the angle eyes as DRLs but it's not possible. You will have to wire it. There're several DIY posted on here.

I'd used ncsdummy. There's no way to code it.
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...-of-NCS-Expert

[bcredliner]

When I installed angel eyes I wired them to come on when the doors are opened and when ignition is on--very easy to do.