Thread: Bmw

**masch** · 04-05-2004, 11:48 PM

I was planning to get a used '92 BMW 318i

I asked the car salesman if it had OBD, he said Sure! He then proceeded to open the hood and pointed me to a black type cylindrical box. He opened it and I saw some pins as big as cotton buds. He said that's what I was looking for.

Now, I was in doubt, because it didnt look like anything I can interface with. I know they were pins, but what could they be? I saw a pic of how an OBD connector supposed to look like in the FAQ of this forum and it didnt look anything like that. And why was it under the hood?

Of course it could trace back into the car to be found some 3 feet from the driver, but I didnt think of it till I got back home.

So could this black cylindrical box be part of the OBD mechanism?

**robiewp** · 04-05-2004, 11:52 PM

big difference between odb and odb II. odb was non standard between manufacturers. I've had exactly **** for luck in finding stuff that would interface with the odb on my 93' jeep.

**masch** · 04-06-2004, 12:22 AM

Oh you mean that it could be OBD 1? Oh man I didnt think there was such a thing, I thought all available in the world were called OBD II's.. (hence there's only one OBD forum).

Yikes.. so was there any solution to your 93 jeep?

**gork** · 04-06-2004, 01:21 AM

masch: 92 bmw does not have OBD I or OBD II -- it has a proprietary interface that BMW used to use before OBD II was mandated in 1996. Some of BMW's 1995 cars have OBD-II, but before that, no...

I have the same huge connector under the hood of my 1985 7 series.. In my former E36, which was a 1996 328is, a similar connector was present even though the car did have OBD-II. On the E46, the proprietary connector is gone and replaced by a proprietary protocol over the OBD-II connector.

**masch** · 04-06-2004, 01:35 AM

Ahh thanks gork. So is there a possible way to interface with that connector? Can any information be extracted from it?

**gork** · 04-06-2004, 01:45 AM

I would not bank on it. You can reset your oilservice and inspection lights if you stick a paperclip into the right pins. You can also crank the engine with a couple other pins in there..

The place to ask would probably be the roadfly forums for that model car.. There are some intelligent people on there.. You would have to be a pretty good programmer though to make it useful for a car computer though

**dmurray14** · 04-10-2004, 11:28 PM

Yeah, that is the standard BMW diagnostic port...they have had it forever. They use the MODIC computer to access it (a cheap $12,000).

**masch** · 04-11-2004, 09:51 AM

Hehe, has anyone been able to interface with that diagnostic port using a PC? I highly doubt it

**W6-Ryan** · 04-11-2004, 11:13 AM

That 318 is mostlikely "mototronic" starting in ~1993 they went to ODB-I standard and all '95s should be ODB-I... hence why people want a '95 M3 to swap the 3.2L into becaue ODB-II is crap for mods.