[nerdrium]

Hi there! Brand new to the forums. Spent a lot of time on computer-related forums "back in the day" but this is my first foray into a bmw-related one!

Anyway. I have a 2011 328xi that has 138,000 miles or so. When I start the car, especially if it cold outside and the car has been sitting, the headlights and parking lights and high beams blink on and off (and some cabin lights, and the backlight for the dash, etc., etc.).

I noticed this after having a headlight bulb burn out, at which point I replaced both lamps with those LCD lights that will fit in the socket out of the box (Oxilam maybe?). That's when I really noticed all the blinking. That might have been coincidence, because I removed them and replaced them with regular old R7 filament bulbs or whatever they were, and we still blink and flash and flicker.

One caveat is that I'm the fifth owner of this car (bought at 100,000 miles or so), and I don't think it was necessarily treated well.

Other things to note? CD player didn't work when I bought the car (I did not realize). Buttons on the steering wheel don't work (and didn't -- I didn't realize that either). I took out the radio and replaced it with a cheapo LCD touch thing that also had a DVD/CD player (that no longer works, of course). I have looked into replacing the "ring thing" behind the steering wheel airbag to make the buttons work, but right now I just want the lights to calm down.

At some point the (BMW-branded) battery in the car died enough times and wouldn't hold a charge, so not knowing what I was doing I replaced it with an auto parts store battery, which lasted maybe 9 months before it went bad. Got a replacement, THEN learned about registering it with the car and cranking amps and all that good stuff and found that yes, I probably destroyed the first battery I purchased by letting the system keep trying to overcharge it. And if that mistake is what is causing the electrical poltergeists now, I wouldn't be surprised.

I *do* have an OBDII "thingy." I also have paid versions of two different apps to "do stuff" (that I used this time around with the battery to set the correct amperage or whatever and then to register the battery).

I have tried searching Google and YouTube but "flashing lights" is hard to narrow down and most of the results I get back aren't what I was looking for.

I apologize for the lengthy post. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Oh, also, my apologies if I was blind and put this in the wrong sub-forum.

Mike

[Serf27]

Which apps do you have?

Bimmergeeks protools is a good app for android phones/tablets.

Do you have LED bulbs in another other part of the car? What color are your interior dome lights?

[nerdrium]

Thank you for your reply, and my apologies for not getting back to this yesterday.

The apps on my phone are BimmerLink, BimmerCode, and bimmertool.

The interior lights of the car are "soft white" (daylight) and don't appear to be LEDs. I would guess the "pretty" outside lights on the doors and such are LEDs, of course, but I have not otherwise installed anything than the headlights that have since been removed.

Usually I can tell when my car is "ready to go" in the morning because when it isn't and I turn on the dome light (so there are two small single bulb lights with on/off buttons and then a bigger light with more of a "soft switch" if that makes sense). If the car is still acting up, the dome light will fade and turn out after a few seconds. Sometimes right away, sometimes it takes a bit. I just keep turning it back on until it stays on for a reasonable period of time, and then usually that means the blinkyness of everything has stopped.

Thanks again. Sorry to be so verbose.

Mike

[Love The Drive]

Hi nerdrium, funny timing with your post. My car also started doing this in December. Might have some helpful info for you in narrowing down the issue since we have about the same vehicles.

Issue: all "night" lights (interior and exterior, including window controls, radio/AC controls, steering wheel buttons/controls, dash board, headlights, tail lights) flicker on and off for about 1 minute until car warms up. I have noticed that the time for flickering to stop is inversely related to how warm the car is. For cold morning start up, let's say it takes 1 minute for the flickering to stop. If I start the car after having driven it for a while, but was parked for 1-2 hours (so not completely cold start), it then takes about 20-30 seconds to stop flickering. And even less time for shorter periods of having turned it off between drives, like a pit stop for food or filling gas for example. Flicker time has been as short as 1 on-off cycle (so about 1 second).

My car:
E90 2011 328i
220k miles
2nd owner after 10k miles (car is well taken care of*)
*Had to replace the engine after 215k miles as a rod bearing went out, metal scraps all inside the engine. Scrapped the engine for a used 40k miles one, then also did transmission maintenance at the same time. Was still on original clutch/flywheel etc.

Parts replaced have all been OEM as far as bulbs and battery, so this is likely not your issue.

Since there is no drivability issue after the flickering stops, I have not taken it in to the mechanic yet. TEMPORARY fix, as I found some info online, is to take it out of AUTO light mode. It does the flickering ONLY in AUTO light mode, for whatever reason. So you can either turn on your fog lights manually while it is still in the AUTO slot, or you can turn it to manual light mode. You should notice the flickering stops when you do this. If you go back to AUTO mode during the flickering period, it will continue to flicker until that "warm up" or whatever going on is completed. But switching out of AUTO stops the flickering during the warm up.

Here is a Reddit thread I had found with one decent explanation on possible issue. Still can't confirm as my issue has not been diagnosed/resolved yet:


https://www.reddit.com/r/E90/comment...tart_resolves/

"Could be the notoriously faulty FRM module starting to have hardware issues, that are presenting as this. Maybe try updating the FRM in WinKFP, coding to stock in NCS with a profile that doesn’t have manipulation ticked. And then re-coding in a manipulation-enabled profile? ThTz what I’d do now that I know what I know. Goodluck. Make sure you code with your car running. If you try to flash with car running in WinKFP, the car will run rough and then stall. Its a good idea to only flash it if you have any sort of battery charger that can charge your battery to full first, OR do it with a fully charged new battery. I say that because simply coding the FRM with low voltage can cause it to brick by corrupting its own firmware. The EEPROM corrupts by deleting a portion of its data due to bad hardware from factory due to low voltage fluctuations. At that point, the module will not communicate with the vehicle, so the only way to restore communication is to manually restore the firmware to a working state on the BENCH. IE, remove module, solder wires, connect programmer to wires, and use programmer to flash new firmware/data to the FRM’s EEPROM, so it knows how to communicate with the car again."

I'll keep you posted what my mechanic finds out when I do end up taking it in. I'm not in a rush though since there is no drivability issue.

[nerdrium]

Thank you so much for the reply!

I can confirm -- time of flickering inversely proportional to how warm the car is (or how cold it is). And the temperature outside plays a factor (from what I can tell). If it is colder than about 40 degrees F, and the car is being started for the first time in a while (like first thing in the morning) the flickering goes on for a while. Once the air temperature heats up, the flickering in the morning stops going on for so long.

Forgive me for being clueless, but I think that I already don't have my lights in "auto" mode. With the nob pointing straight up and down is off, right? Just to the left of that would be auto lights, which I don't use. One click right is running lights (that are on when the light switch is in "off") plus the addition of parking lights and taillights, and two clicks to the right is full headlights. I usually drive either with running lights + fog lights, or full headlights + fog lights. Even with the light switch in what I think is "off" the lights still blink like crazy.

The only interesting thing that sorta makes sense, is if the full headlights are on, one of the antics that happens during all of the blinking is that the brights turn on and off (or turn on and stay on).

Anyway, thanks again for the reply, mostly so I know I'm not just crazy out of my mind.

If I find out anything else, of course, I'll post back.

Mike

[Love The Drive]

Originally Posted by nerdrium

Thank you so much for the reply!

I can confirm -- time of flickering inversely proportional to how warm the car is (or how cold it is). And the temperature outside plays a factor (from what I can tell). If it is colder than about 40 degrees F, and the car is being started for the first time in a while (like first thing in the morning) the flickering goes on for a while. Once the air temperature heats up, the flickering in the morning stops going on for so long.

Forgive me for being clueless, but I think that I already don't have my lights in "auto" mode. With the nob pointing straight up and down is off, right? Just to the left of that would be auto lights, which I don't use. One click right is running lights (that are on when the light switch is in "off") plus the addition of parking lights and taillights, and two clicks to the right is full headlights. I usually drive either with running lights + fog lights, or full headlights + fog lights. Even with the light switch in what I think is "off" the lights still blink like crazy.

The only interesting thing that sorta makes sense, is if the full headlights are on, one of the antics that happens during all of the blinking is that the brights turn on and off (or turn on and stay on).

Anyway, thanks again for the reply, mostly so I know I'm not just crazy out of my mind.

If I find out anything else, of course, I'll post back.

Mike

Interesting. Your issue may be with a different circuit then. As far as I can tell the issue with my car is just on the lights that come on in either AUTO mode (+ dark out, so the headlights come on) or manual headlights ON mode. If I put it in the off position straight up, there is nothing to flicker as far as I can see, since all the night lights including interior buttons (mentioned in my first post) are off. But the flicker ONLY happens in AUTO mode, even though all those same lights are on in all situations where headlights are on, AUTO, AUTO + fog, manual ON, manual ON + fog.

I am actually taking the car in to my mechanic for an oil change soon and will be leaving it there so they can check out the light flicker issue. Will keep you posted as well. And for any other lucky duck like us who comes across this same issue

[Love The Drive]

This should give an idea of what lights are flickering on an off. Aside from headlights and tail lights. See below screenshots from a video taken during startup/flickering issue. Look at dashboard, steering wheel buttons, door lock/DTC/vent hot-cold knob, and radio and AC controls. Also the window controls, not visible here.

[nerdrium]

Yep, Same here. Interior buttons and lights as well.

So this is fun -- the other morning the DOOR LOCKS locked and unlocked during this whole several-minute period of waiting for things to calm down. Stephen King much?

My boss (we're computer nerds, not mechanics) thinks it is presenting like there is a capacitor on the "power control unit" that is probably going bad. He has no idea what such a "power control unit" might be, but that was his thought. And he's pretty smart.

Good luck to you! Hopefully with warmer weather here in the Midwest U.S. starting my blinky light issue will go away -- for a few months at least.

[Serf27]

That could be signs of an FRM starting to go bad.

[nerdrium]

Hi there!

Sorry to resurrect an old, forgotten thread, but I'm an I.T. person and have a tendency to make notes of issues that have been resolved if anyone in the future cares.

At any rate, my blinky lights are fixed!

I had given up and just dealt with it and then my starter finally died. I watched a YouTube video and took it all apart and replaced the starter myself, and put it all back together, and miraculously my car started and runs, but on TOP OF THAT all the blinky/flashy/startup nonsense has stopped. The cabin lights turn on and dim off like they should (but never had), I've had ZERO battery issues, no random "passenger door open" warnings, etc.

I have zero idea of the bad starter was causing a bizarre short, or if in all my unplugging and plugging of wires I "fixed" one that wasn't connected properly before, etc. And I don't care!

Anyway, just wanted to follow up. Apparently my blinkly light problem was caused by a bad starter. Who woulda thought?

Have a great day everyone.

Mike

[Love The Drive]

That's awesome! Glad to hear you got it resolved, and thank you for the info. Might as well have my mechanic take a look at the starter the next time I go in.

Update on my end since the previous trip to the mechanic a month or so ago. They were not able to find anything, even with ECU software updates and whatever else they tried. Since it's not affecting drivability, I left it be for now. For me the solution to stop the flickering still works by manually turning on the daytime lights after starting the car. Until it starts happening while driving, I will let it be.

[evanmiller]

Hi, I recently bought an E90 2011 LCI and I'm having the same issues. It definitely seems like the flickering of lights in auto mode is related to engine temperature.

One thing I did when I bought the car was activate a feature on the dash to display engine oil temperature as I wanted to make sure the engine was up to temperature before putting down high revs.

Could it possibly be by activating this feature it has triggered a bug in the ECU to cause the lights flickering in auto light mode?

I am now trying to figure out how to de-activate the engine temperature display feature I activated when I bought the car to see if it will prevent this horrible light flickering at start-up.

And yes when the lights are put into daytime running or dipped mode this flickering stops but I would rather be in auto mode all of the time.

Here is the video tutorial I used to activate this engine temperature indicator:

Any suggestions would be great.

[ScottieP29]

For me it was the automatic light sensor went bad.. so if you're headlights are set to auto.. check that. Also caused issues with the automatic windshield wipers when in use. Hope that helps