Special thank you to Evan Schulte for taking the time to put together the following guide!
Overview
The biggest difference for N55 is that the DME is located under the intake manifold rather than in the “DME box”. The DME box in N55 cars stores some plastic dividers and a few relays/fuses.
Shown: N55 “DME box”
Removing all of the contents in this box will leave you with 4 connectors. 1 of these connectors is x60001, this is the only connector you will need to use wires from in this box. I chose to cut the connectors off and terminated all of the wires with heat shrink to free up any space I could in the DME box.
Shown: Connector x60001
X60001
This is the connector that you will use for DBW, Radiator fan, key on power, and CAN interface. This connector also has other pins that can be used if desired, but are not required for the swap.
Holley Main Power
Wire the holley main power wire directly to your battery. There is a relay on the battery of these cars which will switch off the power that goes to the DME after x period of time - this will cause your Holley unit to lose tune and TPS autoset will need to be done again. This can be coded out, but the best solution is to just wire the Holley directly to the battery - Holley also tells you to do this in all of their ECU manuals.
Holley Key On Power - UPDATE recommend to use the cigarette lighter fuse at fuse 8 with a fuse tap for a key on ignition source.
Note: Some people have used pin 8 (blue/red) as a switched power source. This switched power source turns on/off quickly when the car is unlocked/locked, when doors open, and various other reasons. It technically does provide power with ignition, but it also provides unwanted short bursts of power that may not be good for the holley unit in the long term.
Shown: Connector x60001, power region
Pinout:
| BMW X60001 | Holley Harness |
| Pin 39 - Green/Yellow | Red/white (ignition wire) |
BMW Start car to brake switch mod
This is required on an factory automatic car to get the start button functional. If you had a factory manual and are still a manual you do not need to do this. If you are a factory manual and now automatic you do need to do this and additionally jump the clutch switch.
You need to connect pin 5 on connect x6031 which should be a blue/black wire to the brake light switch on the X600001 DME connector pin 8. This will send the 12v brake signal to the CAS pin 41 when the brake switch is pressed allowing the start button to function correctly.
Connect pin 1 on x6011 (large gauge black wire) to starter solenoid
Drive By Wire
Shown: Connector x60001, accelerator pedal region
Pinout:
| BMW X60001 | Holley DBW Harness |
| Pin 14 - Blue (A_FWG1) | Yellow - pin e tps #1 |
| Pin 15 - White/Yellow (A_FWG2) | Blue - pin b tps #1 |
| Pin 24 - Yellow/Green (U_FWG2) | Orange - pin c/f sensor 5v |
| Pin 25 - Yellow (U_FWG1) | Orange - pin c/f sensor 5v |
| Pin 27 - Brown/Green (M_FWG1) | Black - pin a/d sensor ground |
| Pin 28 - Brown (M_FWG2) | Black - pin a/d sensor ground |
Radiator Fan
Shown: Connector x60001, radiator fan region
Pinout:
| BMW X60001 | Holley Harness |
| Pin 20 - Black/Blue | 1 of the 4 gray output wires |
To configure your holley unit to control the radiator fans, follow the link below to Michael Page’s documentation. Be sure to take note of which output wire you use on the holley harness as this will be used in the configuration.
Alternator
This is assuming you have a 1 wire alternator. The green (fuel pump) wire from the holley harness is a good option to wire up the exciter wire. You really just need any 12v ignition signal with a 470ohm resistor inline. The resistor is important to avoid burning out the alternator’s voltage regulator.
LSE9x Can Box
Disclaimer: be sure you understand how to properly code and backup the factory coding of these cars before you continue.
Disclaimer: You take full responsibility for any damages that may occur by doing the steps below. These steps have been confirmed to work on 1 car at the time of writing this. Coding with NcsExpert is a pretty well documented procedure and these steps below are nothing out of the ordinary. The same can be accomplished with other coding tools such as Protools. There are many youtube videos demonstrating how to code in new modules and other various changes, these can be of use in teaching you how to use NcsExpert and NcsDummy. You do not need prior knowledge of these programs to perform the steps below, but it can’t hurt.
IMPORTANT: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS WITH A WEAK BATTERY. DO NOT DO THIS WITH A CHARGER ON YOUR BATTERY.
In order to get the can box from LSE90x to work on the N55 platform, you must make modifications to the CAS and KOMBI modules to tell the car it’s an N54. This can be done using a K+DCAN cable with NCS expert. NCS expert can be downloaded on bimmergeeks.net at the link below, you need the “Standard Tools” download. Follow the steps in the readme file provided in the download to install all provided tools - NCS expert will be one of those tools.
THIS STEP CAN ALSO BE DONE WITH PROTOOLS
NCS Expert Download: https://www.bimmergeeks.net/downloads
If you used the provided readme to install NCS expert, you should now have a folder on your desktop named “BMW Tools”. If you do, continue with the steps below. These are the bare minimum needed to get your
- Plug your KD+CAN cable into your car and computer.
- Put the key in the ignition
- Open the BMW Tools folder on your desktop and start the NcsExpert program.
- Select File -> Load Profile on the top left navigation menu.
- Select the Manipulation profile and click Ok
- Hit F4 on your keyboard or click the Process ECU button
- A dialog will appear to “Choose ECU”. Select CAS and click Ok
- Hit F4 or click Read ECU. A text file should open when this completes. You can close this file.
- Open the BMW Tools folder on your desktop and start the NcsDummy program
- There will be 3 drop down menus at the top: Chassis, Module, FSW/PSW or Nettodatatrace1.
- Pick E89 for chassis.
- For module, go to your NcsExpert window and confirm your CAS module number located near the middle of the screen - you will pick this option for the module. It is likely CAS03.C09.
- For FSW/PSW, Click “Browse” and navigate to the path C:\NCSEXPER\WORK. This path may be shown by default. You want to select the file NETTODAT.TRC in this folder and click Open
- NCS Dummy has now read your CAS data and displays it in english with checkboxes allowing you to change options. The options you want to change are as follows:
- MOTOR_HUBRAUM - ENGINE DISPLACEMENT
- Select n54b30 - n54b30 (3.0-liter I6). Selecting this option will automatically select multiple other n54 options and de-select the n55 option
- MOTOR_HUBRAUM - ENGINE DISPLACEMENT
- You are done modifying this file, you can now click Export FSW/PSW -> Export FSW_PSW.MAN
- Go back to NcsExpert, hit F2 or click Change job
- A dialog will appear asking you to Choose a job, choose SG_CODIEREN and click Ok
- Confirm in the middle of the screen that the JOBNAME = SG_CODIEREN, and that CAS is the selected module.
- Hit F3 or click Execute Job. While this is running, the middle of the screen will say “Coding Active”. When it is complete, this will change to “Coding Ended”.
- You will now repeat these steps for the KOMBI module, which is the instrument cluster. Hit F1 or select Change ECU.
- A dialog will appear to “Choose ECU”. Select KOMBI and click Ok
- Hit F4 or click Read ECU
- Open NcsDummy again, this time select the correct KMBI module from the list - it is likely KMBI_PL2.C09
- IMPORTANT: Click browse, and select the NETTODAT.TRC file again. Even though it appears that it is already selected - you must select it again to tell the program to reload it.
- The options you want to change here are:
- DZM_DISP_RPM - TACHOMETER (RPM) SIGNAL SOURCE
- Select wert_01 - value01
- DZM_DISP_RPM - TACHOMETER (RPM) SIGNAL SOURCE
- You are done modifying this file, you can now click Export FSW/PSW -> Export FSW_PSW.MAN
- Go back to NcsExpert, hit F2 or click Change job
- A dialog will appear asking you to Choose a job, choose SG_CODIEREN and click Ok
- Confirm in the middle of the screen that the JOBNAME = SG_CODIEREN, and that KOMBI is the selected module.
- Hit F3 or click Execute Job. While this is running, the middle of the screen will say “Coding Active”. When it is complete, this will change to “Coding Ended”.
- Remove your key from the ignition and reinsert it. Start the engine and you should now have a working tach!
