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E46 Cylinder 2 Misfire

11176 Views 35 Replies 12 Participants Last post by  MrMCar
Well, my 2004 320ci just started misfiring yesterday. INPA says 239 cylinder 2 misfire.

Tried changing coil packs, stayed in cylinder 2. Tried resetting ecu and all that sort of thing, still remained. Swapped fuel injector around, remained on cylinder 2. Been screwing around with it otherwise, and have not came up with any other ideas.

Cylinder 2 appears to do nothing, which I recorded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH4Sv3gSVCs

Any ideas? I'm down to spark plug (I'm waiting on socket, everything is closed due to lockdown..) wiring, or cylinder 2 is shot. I'm honestly not sure, never dealt with this.

Help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
21 - 36 of 36 Posts
Hmmm, I read 'BTS2140-1B'.

They are readily available on Aliexpress, but no datasheet exists. Of course the sellers there have no idea what the part is. That usually means it was a bespoke custom part, and they are selling board pulls or production spares that have been sold off as surplus.

Often it is the same as another part in the manufacturer's product line, but with a carefully tracked supply chain and few production changes. They'll make a zillion of them at once so that they are all identical, store them in a warehouse in case of future sales, and put them in e-waste when they are definitely not going to sell them.

It's not clear if its a N-channel FET or an IGBT. I see a claim that it's the same as the BTS132 (N-FET), and another one where it crosses to a STGB10NB37LZ (IGBT) or 14CL40. I expect that it's an IGBT.
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A friend of mine has an E39 M5. He completely rebuilt the engine, adding a few nice upgrades. He’s a tech, btw. Had occasional misfires on 2 cylinders, especially when he was driving a “little” fast in the rural hills of NC. Turned out that the mosfet that drives each of the 2 coils was bad.

That burn spot tells me that whatever sits above/below it is toast. Btw, I served for 25 years in the US Navy’s advanced electronix program. Does the suspect component have any identification? You could likely buy a new one in your country or you could buy it at www.mouser.com. Mouser has everything electronic and electrical. How handy are you with a soldering iron?
Thanks for your service my brother!

I see a fair amount of these cars/DME's here. I've yet to see one with a coil driver like that on that variety of DME. Most usually (when the lack of pattern failures exist) is the coil it was driving was A: Very Bad and/or improperly made.
B: Driven on for a very long time.

The later scenario could only come to fruition (My guess) is from multiple cold starts in an effort to diagnose/rectify said issue. As the DME should command the driver to shut down after a short period, after the injector was.
Replaced fet, nothing good came out of it. I'm not sure where to go anymore, compression is fine.

Super close to giving up on this thing.
Did you verify cylinder #2 has constant 12V with ignition on?
Is spark missing on cylinder #2?

If DME repair is unsuccessful, you can buy a used one and reprogram it for your car.

Read through the thread that jfoj linked in post #24.
I gave up on this for a while as I had another car, but today I have confirmed that cylinder 2 is not getting any spark. The wiring seems to be fine with a multimeter, so my guess is the DME is still the issue (guessing something else is fried than just that fet)
I'm not sure how to go about this honestly.
At this point, I would follow the advice in post #12 above; get a used MS43 DME, and program/code it for your car.
At this point, I would follow the advice in post #12 above; get a used MS43 DME, and program/code it for your car.
I've pulled the files needed using jmgarageflasher, but cannot get Galletto1620 to work to read the other file I need. Trying it on a XP system shortly.

Also unable to find a DME for my specific car (e46 320ci 2.2l) will other DMEs work by any chance? Once I pull what I need I will be buying a DME if I can find one.
ill bet my left nut #2 is the most reported cylinder misfire ever. why is that? i'd guess cyl#2 is the weakest link or the fall guy when something goes wrong in the engine

i further guess bmw engineers have the inside knowledge about this mysterious resettable cyl2 misfires.
Managed to pickup a DME off eBay, only one I could find to match my car (5WK90019 7536649) came from a different model car but the DME matches my current one. Hopefully all is well and it will work.

Can anybody explain exactly what I will have to do? Will I need to virginize the DME or can I just flash the 512kb full file from my original DME using jmgarageflasher and flash the 64kb partial file from the original using Galletto and be done? I would think that the 512kb + 64kb from the original would be a full clone but I'm not exactly sure, this is all new to me.

Thank you.
The new DME has fixed the issue. Cylinder 2 is now firing!

I successfully got it done the way I intended (with EWS still intact) by using my original DME files (Full + Partial) and patching "Clear Immobilizer Data" in TunerPro and flashing with JMGarageflasher / Galletto and then syncing with INPA. So now I have an absolute 1:1 clone of my original DME! I had some hiccups due to my original files I pulled being corrupted in some way, so anyone reading this going through a similar situation please confirm that your files are what they should be!
I couldn't find a ton of information on this online, so here is what I went through and the symptoms / how I fixed to help people in the future.

Symptoms:
Cylinder 2 Misfiring, compression test came back fine, fuel injectors were fine, wiring was fine, but cylinder 2 was not receiving spark.

Visually inspecting inside the DME I could see an obvious burn mark on the back plate, and what sits above that is a coil driver that drove cylinder 2 to spark. Testing using a multimeter, it was clear that component of the DME was no longer functioning as intended:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm2fsq0-j9s

Unsuccessful fix:
Bought a replacement coil driver and soldered it to the board, but did not fix the issue. Something else had also happened to my DME throughout the chaos that ensued to cause the component to fry.

Successful fix:
1. Bought a used MS43 DME off of eBay for my car (5WK90019 7536649 in my case) note: you will also need an INPA cable to continue if you are using this as a mini tutorial.
2. Pulled the Full + Partial files using JMGarageflasher and Galletto 1620
Credits to this video on how that was achieved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFwdIiqxtbk

3. Downloaded TunerPro as well as the community patchlist XDF and loaded that to TunerPro.
4. Opened the Full (512kb) file in TunerPro and patched "Clear Immobilizer Data" then saved the changes to file.
Image for reference:


5. Flashed the Full 512kb file using JMGarageflasher and the Partial 64kb file using Galletto 1620.
6. Opened INPA, went to E46->Engine-> EWS -> Sync'd
7. Car was repaired! :clap:

Additional references:
https://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=1082287
https://www.ms4x.net/index.php?title=Main_Page
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Well done! Thanks for sharing all the details.
It takes a special kind of determination to fix this difficult problem, so hats off!
Well, my 2004 320ci just started misfiring yesterday. INPA says 239 cylinder 2 misfire.

Tried changing coil packs, stayed in cylinder 2. Tried resetting ecu and all that sort of thing, still remained. Swapped fuel injector around, remained on cylinder 2. Been screwing around with it otherwise, and have not came up with any other ideas.

Cylinder 2 appears to do nothing, which I recorded:

Any ideas? I'm down to spark plug (I'm waiting on socket, everything is closed due to lockdown..) wiring, or cylinder 2 is shot. I'm honestly not sure, never dealt with this.

Help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
Hi I have the very same issue, my problem was caused due to a failed disa flap unit, causing the number 2 coil pack to burn and in turn caused an issue on the Ecu. The Car starts and idles however it has a slight misfire. The BMW Tech I appointed has now advised to have the Ecu unit repaired as it is not sending spark signal to the number 2 spark plug. I will also have to replace the burnt coil pack. Will update once the Ecu is back from assessment and repairs. Good Luck! I also have an E46 2004 BMW.
Hmmm... so the coil in #2 was bad enough to be overdriven by the ECU. The driver in the DME overheated and needs replacement. Is that correct?
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