E71 Missing LED Headlights - Interesting Issue

[Aceattack52]

Hi guys,

Recently I purchased a 2013 E71 as a bit of a project. It had an issue with the wiring harness for the engine that someone mangled badly. I have resolved that issue and I'm on to the other things going on with the car.

The issue I am hung up on now is with the headlights. I am very consistently getting warnings for the low beam/high beam/running lights for both sides not working even though all of the lights turn on and work!

I also have these codes stored in the FRM:

AD1E-"LIN status message timeout, left LED main module"
AD1F- "LIN status message timeout, right LED main module"

Upon further inspection, I think I found the problem. The car has xenon headlights (housings, bulbs, modules, etc.) in it right now. They look like they match the age and mileage of the car. It doesn't look like the car has been in a front end accident and it doesn't look like they have been changed out. When I run the VIN through Mdecoder online, it shows the car is supposed to have option "S552-Adaptive LED headlights". Great. That would be why it can't communicate with the LED modules; they don't exist because it has the wrong headlights in it. I guess someone changed out the entire headlights at some point

My question: can I do anything to either trick the car into thinking the LED modules are still there or can I code the warnings off? I don't want to exchange the headlights for the LED headlights; they are very expensive and all the lights work great as it is! I just want the warnings to not show up. Is that possible? Thanks!

[Steinnn]

Your diagnosis is correct. On the E71 X6, the FRM is coded for S552 Adaptive LED headlights, so it’s expecting to see the LED main modules on the LIN bus. Since the car actually has xenon headlights installed, those modules don’t exist, which causes the AD1E / AD1F LIN timeout faults even though all lighting functions work.

There’s no way to trick the system or simply code those warnings off. BMW doesn’t provide an FDL option to ignore missing LED modules, and disabling bulb checks or adding resistors won’t fix LIN communication errors.

The proper fix is to code the car to match the installed hardware: remove S552 from the FA/VO, add S522 (xenon headlights) if needed, and VO-code the FRM (and KOMBI if required).

Once the FRM is no longer expecting LED modules, the warnings and faults will clear. You don’t need LED headlights, the vehicle just needs to be coded for xenons.

[argento]

Aren’t these completely different power requirements? Maybe the voltage delta is a problem?

[Aceattack52]

Thank you guys for the replies. I'm going to start working through the coding for this