Here's the info on blinking light... (archive)

I posted this last week on the board but I'll give you the details. I don't know if me getting
the clown nose to work entails going to the dealer to have the parking lights activated
(which I did have done) but it may work without it.

I was installing an aftermarket alarm light (the kind of light with a strip of 7-8 LEDS which
turn on successively from right to left and then back. Sort of looks like the lights on the
front of the car called Kit in the 1980's Knight Rider series) in the BMW which I had in one
of my other cars for many years.

I pulled apart the interior lighting assembly (above the rearview mirror) and detached the
panel and then the light itself. This alarm light which I was installing has three wires which
I needed to connect (a ground, a hot which is always hot, and another hot which is dead
when the car is off but on when the car is on. This is so the light knows to turn on when
the car is off and off when the car is on).

Anway, I connected the ground to a screw in the roof which holds a black plastic support
structure. The hot wire connected to the third space from the right on the main light block
of wires which was unused(always hot wire). The other wire conected to the green wire in
a set of three wires to the upper right side of the hole in the head board that were wrapped
together and not being used (may be for the auto dimming mirrors or rain sensing system).
This green wire was the wire that goes dead when the car is shut off.

Once everything was connected the aftermarket alarm light started to work as it should. I
was proud of myself! THEN, I locked the doors with the remote and the aftermarket light
shut off and the clown nose STARTED blinking. If I open the trunk with the doors being
locked then both lights flash. I'm now thinking that if I just bridge the two wires (always hot
wire in the lighting assembly, and the green wire from the unused set of three wires), the
clowns nose will blink. That's a job for this week some time. Don't have the time right
now. Although I just may leave it as is.

I just found this by accident and have no idea why it works. All I know is that the dealer
said the clown nose would not blink without the interior sensor. We all know that's a load of
BS as I initially thought. So, the light is blinking and I do not have the alarm components.

By the way, the dealer programmed my car with the Modic version 2.2 software.

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