Remote Central Locking

Posted by , February 8, 2007 Comments(2)

It’s taken an embarrassing amount of time, but five hours later I have remote central locking working. The kit was ยฃ34.45 including delivery, and was in hindsight easy to install.

I started by installing the new central locking control unit. In comparison with the old board, the new unit is in far better condition.

Central Locking Control Unit

At this stage the car’s locking worked perfectly from the key – all good news. I then set about installing the remote controller, and I managed to muddle up a couple of wires, which I fear has resulted in the death of the deadlock control element of the new central locking unit. That said, it is of course feasible that it was already bust as I didn’t specifically check.

This left me in a position where I couldn’t unlock the passenger door by any means all at – the E30 uses a deadlocking system in addition to the normal locks, and when these are engaged it’s impossible to open the doors even from the inside. Again Ian Haynes came to the rescue and talked me through manually jumping the electrical connectors to release the door.

At this point I had remote central locking working, but wires everywhere and most importantly, I wanted to wire the indicators to flash as the car locked / unlocked. Fortunately Robin popped in to say hello at this stage, and he set about finding the right wires…

Robin removed steering wheel

Once we’d tapped into the right wires it was just a case of tidying up the mess. A few cable ties and a mile of insulation tape later, and the job was done.

locking wiring

So, I’m now really chuffed to have remote central locking working, indicators flashing and all – just like the E46. The boot and fuel flap work correctly. It all makes such a difference to how friendly the car feels – I’m really, really pleased.

To top it off, the keys are replicas of the E46 key, and tomorrow I’ll have their blades cut.

New keys

2 comments so far

  1. Gov on July 5th, 2010 22:57

    Hello mate…..by any chance did you buy the ‘Rightclick’ central locking kit? How did you manage to engage the deadlocks with the central locking? Do you have any diagrams you used to help me do the same thing you’ve done? Any helps appreciated. Thanks. Gov

  2. Neil Mukerji on July 6th, 2010 20:36

    Hello,

    Oh – I’m afraid I can’t remember the make of the locking kit now – it was 40 months ago!

    I was going to tell you that I didn’t recall the kit operating the deadlocks, but then I had a hunt around on the web in an attempt to help you and I found this:

    http://www.unofficialbmw.com/repair_faqs/central_locking.html

    There’s some detail under the ‘General’ heading about pins, but also the ‘Double lock’ section rang bells, so maybe my kit did handle that too.

    Really sorry I can’t remember more – good luck!