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190 Posts
Hello All, Well, 3 months into ownership of my MCS 5-door and I still seem to be discovering new things about it by the day. Believe it or not, I've only this week discovered that despite having the LED lights, I don't have the option of Daylight Running Lights (i.e. the LED "halo" around the main headlight).
It took me a while to get to the bottom of this: I usually have the lights switched to "auto" and let them take care of themselves, and noticed only recently that there were no lights on at all for most of the day. The Japanese manual said there should be DRL on "auto" and "0" switch settings, exactly what it says in the English manual, which made me wonder whether DRLs were an option I'd forgotten to specify. But I talked to the dealer yesterday and found out that the Japanese manual is wrong and all cars supplied to Japan come without DRLs. Apparently, they aren't exactly illegal here, but fall into something of a grey area.
Anyway, speaking "off the record" the dealer has put me in touch with a place about an hour's drive from me that can recode my F55 so as to unlock the DRLs. I'm still waiting to get a price on this, but in the meantime wondered whether there are any issues I need to think about. Here are a few I'm already aware of:
1) My dealer told me that although DRLs are not exactly "legal" in Japan, they're not explicitly "illegal" either, so he said he couldn't imagine my being pulled over by the police for having them. So OK on that score, I think, but I want to make sure that any re-coding would give me the option of turning off DRLs in the car settings - just in case (currently DRLs do not appear in any of my setting menus)
2) If I get the coding for DRLs done, this will invalidate my warranty for the lights, but I wonder if I should be too concerned about this given that the LED lights are supposed to last for the life of the car. Still, if something goes wrong with the lights post-DRL coding, it could prove an expensive repair (?)
3) Any coding I get done will be erased whenever I update the software for the car. The dealer said they will be updating the software for me when the car goes in for it's 12-month maintenance check in November. Interestingly, he said that with a software update and the removal of the DRL code the LED lights would once again be covered by the warranty. If I wanted to keep the DRLs after that, I'd need to go back and get the coding done again. Apparently though, having forked out for the coding the first time any subsequent recoding required would be done free of charge - I'd just need to make the 2-hour round trip to get it done each time.
I wonder if there are any other issues I need to consider. I do like the look of the DRLs, but can certainly live without them. From a safety point of view, when I think I need some lamps during the day (we have had some heavy snowstorms recently which didn't trigger the auto headlights), I can easily turn on the small parking lights or full lights if needed. But the LED halo has been so prominent in the promotion of the F56/F55, I feel like I'm missing out by not having them - especially having specced the LEDs and expecting to get the DRLs with them. Any thoughts?
It took me a while to get to the bottom of this: I usually have the lights switched to "auto" and let them take care of themselves, and noticed only recently that there were no lights on at all for most of the day. The Japanese manual said there should be DRL on "auto" and "0" switch settings, exactly what it says in the English manual, which made me wonder whether DRLs were an option I'd forgotten to specify. But I talked to the dealer yesterday and found out that the Japanese manual is wrong and all cars supplied to Japan come without DRLs. Apparently, they aren't exactly illegal here, but fall into something of a grey area.
Anyway, speaking "off the record" the dealer has put me in touch with a place about an hour's drive from me that can recode my F55 so as to unlock the DRLs. I'm still waiting to get a price on this, but in the meantime wondered whether there are any issues I need to think about. Here are a few I'm already aware of:
1) My dealer told me that although DRLs are not exactly "legal" in Japan, they're not explicitly "illegal" either, so he said he couldn't imagine my being pulled over by the police for having them. So OK on that score, I think, but I want to make sure that any re-coding would give me the option of turning off DRLs in the car settings - just in case (currently DRLs do not appear in any of my setting menus)
2) If I get the coding for DRLs done, this will invalidate my warranty for the lights, but I wonder if I should be too concerned about this given that the LED lights are supposed to last for the life of the car. Still, if something goes wrong with the lights post-DRL coding, it could prove an expensive repair (?)
3) Any coding I get done will be erased whenever I update the software for the car. The dealer said they will be updating the software for me when the car goes in for it's 12-month maintenance check in November. Interestingly, he said that with a software update and the removal of the DRL code the LED lights would once again be covered by the warranty. If I wanted to keep the DRLs after that, I'd need to go back and get the coding done again. Apparently though, having forked out for the coding the first time any subsequent recoding required would be done free of charge - I'd just need to make the 2-hour round trip to get it done each time.
I wonder if there are any other issues I need to consider. I do like the look of the DRLs, but can certainly live without them. From a safety point of view, when I think I need some lamps during the day (we have had some heavy snowstorms recently which didn't trigger the auto headlights), I can easily turn on the small parking lights or full lights if needed. But the LED halo has been so prominent in the promotion of the F56/F55, I feel like I'm missing out by not having them - especially having specced the LEDs and expecting to get the DRLs with them. Any thoughts?
