Coding f56 battery

[Chestrockwell]

My girlfriends mini’s battery died so we bought a new one, I fit it and the car now starts however I read that the battery needs to be coded in

Any idea on what this is about? Where do I need to take it, will it harm the car or battery, she needs to drive to work tomorrow but I’m concerned it might do some damage, there isn’t much info online explaining why

Thanks in advance

[un1eash]

You need to either take it to a garage to get coded or use an obd2 adaptor and app like Carly/Bimmerlink.

It won't hurt the battery in the short term but if you don't code and tell the car it's had a new battery it will shorten the life of the new battery. Have seen them fail after 2/3 years due to not coding.

Where are you based?

[Chestrockwell]

Thank you for the info, I have a BMW mechanic nearby however he couldn’t see me this weekend

Based in west byfleet surrey

[blue al]

Your fine for a week or 2

[Pistom]

The question also is - how do you know if it has been coded.

I had one fitted and they didn't code.

I think stop start won't work if it hasn't been coded.

[un1eash]

Ok so there's really 2 steps when fitting a battery. Coding to tell the car the battery capacity, eg 70ah so if you replace the battery with one of a different capacity you need to code this.
Then you need to register the new battery to say it's a new battery and this registration history is stored. You can use bimmerlink to check the health of a battery and it will also tell you the mileage when the last battery was registered. Some dealers will register an old battery as new to try and get the battery to charge to full again but if the battery is no good this doesn't work.
Coding and registering won't affect stop start, it's the battery condition or level of charge that will, recently I had to replace the battery in my BMW as after a run stop start worked but only for a few seconds and when checked the battery was down to 60%, the car ran and started fine still.
The car will disable other things with a low battery such as the window demister or you'll notice the clock/radio resetting, it does this to save power so the car will at least start.

Edited by un1eash on Tuesday 22 August 09:13

[Pistom]

Thanks for the full explanation on coding and lack of impact on stop start.

When I changed mine, stop start wouldn't work until the battery was coded but I guess that's because the battery wasn't getting fully charged?

I also had a warning triangle on the display which went the moment it was coded.