Teach Park Lock Module help, switch on terminal 15

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liam821

Member
Joined
Mar 19, 2023
Messages
6
Hi all,

My mom's 2017 i3 REX 12v battery died. She wasn't exactly sure what had happened at the time and tried a few times to move and/or start it without luck and finally called me. I figured out over the phone pretty quick that the 12v battery had probably died. We had a bunch of bad weather here in Portland and her i3 had been sitting in the garage for a few weeks without use. It also wasn't plugged into its high-voltage charger during this time.

Anyway, I picked up a new 12v battery from BMW. I verified it was fully charged and installed it. I registered the battery with Rheingold ISTA-d but the car would not move afterwards. It through all sorts of "drivetrain malfunction" faults and was all around grumpy. it would shift into D or R, but not move, and it would not shift into PARK. In reverse, it made an awful sound for a split second before I took my foot off the gas. I guessed the parking lock was engaged and the computer had lost its mind about where the parking lock was. I pulled the codes and had:

222D27 "Parking lock module, activation: no teach-in values stored"
2228C0 "Parking lock, parking lock position monitoring. Wrong parking lock position"
222851 "Parking lock, parking lock position monitoring. Position Unknown"
222011 "Electrical machine, rotor position sensor, signal. Rotor position sensor adjustment"

I was able to run the transmission rotor position sensor adjustment service in ISTA without issue which removed that last code above. This cleared all the "drivetrain malfunction" faults.

Running the "learn parking lock module" service function in ISTA started fine and it was able to finally unlock the parking lock and put the car into neutral but the procedure would end in an "unknown error, procedure was unsuccessful". I tried a few times and would always end in an unknown error. The one thing I'm not sure about is part of the preliminary work says "switch on terminal 15", which I'm assuming means have the car "on", but I'm not entirely sure.

I suppose it's possible that the parking lock module is bad, but the car didn't have any issues before the battery died, and the car is able to successfully switch the parking lock module into neutral from the parked lock position, so I'm assuming that it's fine and I'm just doing something wrong. The car also has pretty low miles, just over 36,000.

Is there some special procedure to "switch on terminal 15"? That's the only thing I can think of that I'm doing wrong.

Thankfully the car drives fine now, just won't go into park when stopped. So to get the charge door open, you need to pull the cord behind the right-side passenger door. Hopefully, I don't have to drop this thing off at bmw service...

Thoughts?
 
Try letting it sit overnight while plugged in. Throwing all sorts of error codes and nonsense is a common issue with a failed 12v and for many people, simply letting it sit so the computers can work it out overnight seems to fix most everything. I've even seen BMW Techs chime in to say that's what they end up doing in some cases.
 
Tried that. There were actually 4 days sitting on its high voltage charger between me changing the 12v battery/registering and clearing the codes and trying to do the service procedures. I was hoping it would just magically fix itself overnight but nope.

After some more research, I'm pretty sure "terminal 15 to on" just means turning on the ignition. ISTA could have just said that... I drove the car back to my house yesterday and it drove great. I'll try again today and see if I get anywhere different. If not, its off to the bmw dealer. *sigh*
 
terminal 15 is German engineer speak for ignition on

https://www.spoolstreet.com/threads/bmw-battery-terminals-explanation-15-15n-15wup-30-30g-30g_f-30b-30f-50.5630/
 
I tried again today. I tried running the "park lock test" function, which is supposed to cycle the park lock between neutral and park 5 times. It cycles the park lock into park successfully but does not cycle it back into neutral again.

Afterward trying to run the "teach park lock" procedure moves the park lock back into neutral successfully but then just errors again.

So it's able to move the stupid module between park and neutral, but it won't learn and do it from the drive controller. ugh

I'm stumped :(
 
do you have BimmerCode?

If you code any specific module - BimmerCode does some magic and resets that module and clears out all errors.

Would be worth trying coding some random stuff in the Body controller and the parking module and later just reverse it (write down what you did)
 
Just a follow-up. I upgrade to the newest ISTA version 4.39.20 and reran the park lock learn procedure and it completed without issue. All the codes are gone, the car can move into park and drive without issue now.

I'm pretty sure the tl;dr; 12v battery died, my mom tried to move the car and it didn't have enough power to move the parking solenoid which caused a bunch of errors. Probably wouldn't have happened if she'd just left it and not try to move the car.

After I replaced/registered the new battery it was just a matter of clearing codes and running a few service procedures with the right version of ISTA.
 
liam821 said:
I upgrade to the newest ISTA version 4.39.20 and reran the park lock learn procedure and it completed without issue. All the codes are gone, the car can move into park and drive without issue now.
Good to learn that the ISTA version matters. Which version did not work? I've got a pretty old version, 4.10.?? I now have a 2019 i3. I assume that version 4.39.20 would work well. Please tell me where you got ISTA version 4.39.20 (PM me if you're uncomfortable posting this information to the forum).
 
Bmw diagnostic/ programmin dealership software ista 4.39.20

https://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1984373
 
alohart said:
liam821 said:
I upgrade to the newest ISTA version 4.39.20 and reran the park lock learn procedure and it completed without issue. All the codes are gone, the car can move into park and drive without issue now.
Good to learn that the ISTA version matters. Which version did not work? I've got a pretty old version, 4.10.?? I now have a 2019 i3. I assume that version 4.39.20 would work well. Please tell me where you got ISTA version 4.39.20 (PM me if you're uncomfortable posting this information to the forum).

I was using v3.41.10 - super duper old! Ha! But it pulled the VIN and did all the things correctly, so I figured it would be okay. My old version was running on a Windows XP machine inside VirtualBox which has all the bmw software. My daily is an e46m3 and my wife has an e70x5 (Although we generally just drive our i3s) and I use that image for inpa and ncs expert which always worked perfectly. Since it had ISTA and pulled the vin correctly I figured it would work...nope

I downloaded 4.39.20 here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uMVuDt3LQx2qX0GuCy1fcG4ww02qAgUT

"ISTA_Standalone 4.39.20 activated_not sedoy release.torrent"

If that URL doesn't work, just PM me I saved the torrent file.

It's a massive download 128gb, so make sure you have enough hard drive space. :)
 
liam821 said:
I downloaded 4.39.20 here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uMVuDt3LQx2qX0GuCy1fcG4ww02qAgUT
Thanks! I haven't used ISTA previously. Does it require a license? I don't see a license.txt file in the distribution you've referenced. The distribution that eXodus referenced requires a $200 payment for a license which is more than I would pay. I have a license for ISTA 4.10, but I don't know whether it would work with ISTA 4.39.20.
 
alohart said:
liam821 said:
I downloaded 4.39.20 here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uMVuDt3LQx2qX0GuCy1fcG4ww02qAgUT
Thanks! I haven't used ISTA previously. Does it require a license? I don't see a license.txt file in the distribution you've referenced. The distribution that eXodus referenced requires a $200 payment for a license which is more than I would pay. I have a license for ISTA 4.10, but I don't know whether it would work with ISTA 4.39.20.

The one I linked is already activated and requires no additional license or payment. It's free.
 
liam821 said:
The one I linked is already activated and requires no additional license or payment. It's free.
Great! Is it only the diagnostic version or could it program as well? It doesn't appear to have the programming module, SDP, that the $200 version has.
 
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