Thread: P38 Diagnostics/Troubleshooting

so what i can gather at this time of the night in my drunken state is the nanocom can break into and reprogram all systems including engine management? as well as code clearing etc. is this correct or is the alcahol vision telling lies.

Correct Mick - the alcohol is not telling fibs. As far as I can tell, the Nanocom does everything the MSV-2 does... except for the advanced BeCM reprogramming which is a $1000 option on the MSV-2, requires a special cable, removal of the BeCM and resoldering of connections on the main board.

Off to top up my glass of red...

Cheers, Paul.

I've just taken delivery of a Nanocom. I went over to Paul's place and got a demo and a long chat. I pretty much decided that if I was going to have a P38, I was going to need some sort of ECU diagnostics.

Paul gave me a run down on a few of the things the Nanocom could do. For the money, it's by far and away the best value tool. I've hooked mine up and gone through all the ECUs, found a few faults, changed a couple of behaviours ( I think, still learning!). The Nanocom rocks. I wish all cars would come with this kind of technology.

At the moment, I have an SRS fault. Hooked the nanocom up and instantly found that it was because the driver's airbag was reporting open circuit. I'd not long ago replaced the steering wheel. Pretty obvious what's happened there. It would have taken me ages to find that without the Nanocom. I had the answer in less than 2 minutes.

I can't recommend one of these highly enough. I won't be going on any trips without it.

Also, it's cool being able to set your temp gauge to various levels to see if it's working correctly. And turn your number plate lights on. And stuff.

Just buy one. It will be the best workshop investment you make.

just a follow up on the ecu tuning side of thie nanocom, are you able to set the ecu into learn mode and can you manually adjust the ignition, fuel maps and compensations. wondering if the nanocom will give me enough tuning leway with the std ecu or if im still going to have to shell out for the m800 motec.

cheers

Hi Wanglemoose ... the Bosch Motronic 5.2.1 engine management system as fitted to the P38, is deliberately designed to prevent changes to the fuel mapping etc. Even if one is able to introduce minor changes to the tune, the ECU locks itself and becomes a "brick" after about 12 changes... there's a writeup about the frustrations of this on the BMW 3 series website
The GEMS programme is able to be tweaked... but not necessarily by the Nanocom.