Tag: quirks

Top 15 Useful BMW i3 Hidden Features

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  1. Key and Key fob

We’ll start with some simple ones for those newer to BMWs and the I3. This seemingly simple key actually has many hidden features. Everyone knows you can roll down your windows and sun roof on most BMWs by just holding the unlock button for a few seconds, but did you also know there is a physical key that has a couple of features of its own? Not only can it open the driver’s door, it can also lower and raise the windows if you hold it all the way to the right or left. Well, only the front windows, the rears are fixed in.

A couple other fun key features I found is that if you hit the lock button on your key fob when the windows are opened a little, it will go back up inch by inch and if you have a European version , you can just hold the lock button to close them completely. If your car is plugged into a charger and you lock it, you will also see the charge status. Lastly, if you hit the lock button twice within 10 seconds, it will DE-activate the tilt alarm and the interior motion sensor. Great for leaving a dog in the car.

  • Door Handle

Speaking of leaving things in the car, you don’t have to open the rear door to put something in the back. You can use this handy handle on the back of the seat to lean it forward like in a 2-door car. However, if you do open the door and look in the corner here, you fill find that you have some pull tabs behind a cover. There are these manual pulls all over the car. You can open the charging port, the front trunk and fuel filler door.

  • Fuel cap and charge port has a spot to be stored

While we are here at the fuel door, when you fill your car with either gas or electricity, don’t let the cap dangle, there is a built-in spot to keep them off the paint.

Interior:

  1. Telescoping steering column

Switching over to the interior and controls, there are some fun ones here as well! For example, I recently learned that the steering wheel is not only adjustable up and down, but it’s also telescopic!? How cool!

  • Turn Signal Cancel

Some of the features you use daily also have little tricks behind them. For example, when using a turn signal, you don’t have to push it the opposite direction and turn on the other one accidentally, you can simply tap in the same direction to cancel it. I know it solves a problem that BMW has created by changing how their turn signals work, but cool nonetheless.

  • Follow me home and parking lights

You can also use this stalk to turn on follow me home lights by pushing the stalk away from you. Your low beams will stay on for 30 seconds. This is also why I upgraded mine to LEDs.

Similarly, you can turn on parking lights by pushing the stalk up or down. Left or right side of the car will stay on. Great for street parking or parking in an alley.

  • Put car in neutral/skip neutral

Switching to the other side of the steering wheel, there are a couple of features here as well. You can skip Neutral when selecting Drive or Reverse by pushing the gear change lever past the first click. This one is easy to find after driving the car for a while, but how do you put the car in Neutral? You would think you can just pop it in N and turn it off… but it just goes to Park on its own. To do so, hold the gear lever and the power button for 3 seconds and the release both. Now you are in neutral and car is off.

  • Can turn on radio when car is off

There are a couple of tricks with the entertainment system as well. As an example, you can power on the radio with the car off by simply hitting the volume/power button.

  • Shortcut Buttons

Just to the right of the power button, we have some preset buttons, but what most people don’t know is that you don’t have to use it for radio, you can use it as a shortcut for almost anything in the system. For example, you can make one of them toggle the Hold State of Charge aka turn on the Range Extender or dim the control panel brightness or even switch to different music sources and much more. Fun fact, if you’d like to reset all of them, simply hold 1 and 8 at the same time.

  • Hidden menu

Ok, ok, I hear some of you screaming that you know all of these already, but did you know that this small city car has a drift mode!?

Ok, it’s not actually called a drift mode, but there is a hidden menu that gives you tons of additional information and allows you to enable a roller mode where it will turn off the traction control, stability control, ABS and regenerative braking giving you full control of the rear wheels!

Getting into the hidden menu is fairly simple, you just hold the trip reset button for a few seconds and you are in! Here you can find a few options, including the roller mode which you can press and hold to enable. You can also unlock this menu for a ton more information, like your battery capacity, temperature and other specs not otherwise advertised. To unlock it, enter the sum of the last 5 digits of your VIN and you are in! I will do a full video on this as I think it deserves a deeper dive. We can even check out the CiC iDrive service menu in that video as well. Let me know if that is something you’d be interested in seeing.

  • Coat Hanger
  • Power plug

If you haven’t seen my camera install video, you might not know that there is a power plug right under the air vents, super convenient for charging your phone. Also, there is a hidden coat hanger behind this little cover. All you have to do is flip it around.

Engine/Driving:

The last few items I wanted to mention have to do with the engine, driving and storing the vehicle.

One features that’s hard to figure out yourself as a driver is that when braking really hard, the car will also illuminate the lower lights, giving more of a warning to the cars behind, but not only that, if you open the rear hatch and your lights are no longer visible, the lower set will take over and work as regular lights and brakes! Great thinking on BMW’s part here!

  1. Rex Emissions Mode
  2. You can check oil level unlike other BMWs

Luckily BMW did more thinking around the range extender engine which leads me to the next hidden feature, you can put the car in emissions mode. This will turn on the engine and run it for 20 minutes to bring it up to operating temperatures and prepare systems for emissions testing. Your battery charge has to be under 75% as it will charge the battery as a side effect. Could be useful in an emergency! To turn it on, open the hatch, turn on the ignition and then press the accelerator pedal 3 times and hold on the third. Release and press the brake button followed by the Start and Stop button. The engine will start at this point. Another fun fact about this motorcycle engine is that it actually has an oil dip stick, so you can check the oil level unlike most other BMWs. Nice!

  • Long storage hidden feature, hack:

The very last trick that could be useful for some has to do with storing a BMW i3 over longer time. BMW says not to allow the vehicle to sit idle for extended period of time on low charge, so it must be close to fully charged to be stored. This will work great for the high voltage battery, but you will still be risking killing the 12v battery since simply having the car plugged in will not charge it. So, to circumvent this, what you can do is set up a departure time once a week, this will power on the car and charge your 12v battery at the same time saving you a headache in the future.

Summary:

Wow this turned out to be a pretty long video! So, I hope you have learned something new or interesting about a BMW i3 and if you are a hardcore enthusiast, I’d love to hear some of the things I’ve missed. Also, if you’d like to access some more truly hidden features, check out this video where I show you how to code your car for more range, true control of the range extender and even adding a sport mode! Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one!

BMW R Nine T Hidden Features

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Hey guys and welcome back to the SimpleCarGuy channel. Today we are taking a look at some hidden features, tips and tricks and thing you may not know about the BMW R Nine T, also known as the best modern retro styled roadster.

If you have been riding bikes for longer than I have been alive or have had BMW bikes for a while, I’m sure you already know all of the ones below but hey.. maybe there is one that you don’t! If you are a pro, I’d love to hear some tips and tricks below in the comments so we can all learn something cool or new. For everyone else, stick around and I hope you enjoy the video. Let’s get to it!

So, what are some things you may not know about this bike?

  1. If you have owned a modern bike, you probably think that you can just turn off ABS or other safety features with a button, but on the BMW R Nine T you cannot turn off ABS unless you have the new version with throttle by wire. In this case your bike will have traction control as well and you can turn off both using the ASC button.
  2. You may not be able to turn of ABS, but did you know that this bike has an OBD2 port? With a $15 dollar adapter, you can scan the bike, see live data and if you have BMW software or buy a fancy motorcycle scanner, you can do so much more! Very cool.
  3. So, we can read this bike’s computer, but we can also plug in a dedicated GPS or phone charger by using the onboard power socket that’s hidden on the left side of the bike here. This socket is protected just like BMW cars where if the battery voltage falls below the level required to start the bike, it will be deactivated.
  4. If your battery does go below required voltage at some point, you are in luck, because this bike has a built-in trickle charger port. Since the BMW R Nine T uses AGM batteries which can be a little finicky when it comes to charging, you have to follow some steps. You must leave your motorcycle on the trickle charger over winter if not riding or the battery will be trash by spring. IN fact, this bike has had a new battery installed after only 800 miles because the previous owner left it over winter and the fact that it took 2 years to do that many miles. In fact, I have already done about that many miles in the few weeks I’ve owned it. BMW Recommends to plug the bike in if not redden for more than 4 weeks.
    1. Some additional notes on this, you cannot jump start the bike from this socket. The wires are not thick enough and rated for high current and can cause a fire.
    1. It’s also recommended to only use this socket to charge as onboard electronics monitor this socket and know when the battery is fully charged and switch off the onboard socket to make sure if you get a cheap battery tender, you won’t fry your bike or battery. If you’d like to charge you battery directly, it must be disconnected from the bike first.  
  5. The next item on my list is the TPMS or the lack of TPMS sensors on this bike. This is, again, old school so kind of expected, so check your tire pressure. When I picked up my bike and rode it home, I was wondering where was this great handling that everyone has been talking about. The bike kept trying to stand up and was slow through turn. The 15 pounds of pressure made a huge difference and how the bike is very confident on the road and the difference is huge. This is a bit motorcycles 101, but no dumby light here, so check manually.
  6. Speaking of dumby lights, that’s all you get for fuel level as well. There is no fuel gauge on this bike, but you will be informed with a simple light once it’s on reserve.
  7. Number 7 is a parking light. This is pretty common in Europe as far as I understand, but pretty rare on bike in the states. To turn it on, switch off the ignition and then immediately hold the indicator switch to the left until the lights turn on. Cycle the ignition to turn it off.
  8. A feature that surprised me on this bike was actually the auto-cancel indicator switch. If you forget to turn it off, it will actually turn itself off after 10 seconds or 300 meters (almost 1000ft) of driving.
  9. Going back to the battery, if you even need to jump-start the bike, you have to use the connection point on the positive battery terminal under the seat and the negative terminal on the right-side cylinder. Now, of course, the seat cannot just be opened, so it has to be removed. Luckily, you only have to remove 1 screw to remove both seats. Your bike should come with a key for this screw, but I got mine used so I use an actual socket. My replacement Is on the way.
  10. The last thing you may not have know is that you can removed the baffle in the exhaust known as the DB killer to improve the depth of the exhaust sound. It only takes 5 minutes and very easy to do. I have a video on how to do that exactly if you’d like to check it out. It’s also easily reversable if you don’t like it.

A few things you should know about the bike is how to check your fluids! I feel like it’s even more important on a motorcycle than it is on the car. As an example, to check your oil, you have to make sure the bike is warmed up and on leveled surface and hold the motorcycle vertical. Then you have to wait 5 minutes and check the little window. The oil should be between top and button. This and much, much more is in the manual for the bike. People complain that manuals now-a-days only have stuff like don’t drink battery contents, but this manual is actually very useful. You can even learn how to remove and reinstall front and rear wheel. Speaking of wheels and tires, this motorcycle has quick release front axle. Who knew such thing even existed!? I was also surprised that on a modern, although retro looking bike, you would still have tube tires, just like on my 1976 Honda CB360!

Well, that’s all I have or you guys today, I hope you learned something new or at least found it interesting. I’d love to hear your opinion or features I don’t know about in the comments down below, like the video and subscribe to the channel for more content and I’ll see you in the next one!

Top 10 Useful Chevy Volt Hidden Features

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Just bought a Chevy Volt or renting out for a weekend? Find the top 10 useful hidden features on the Chevrolet Volt. Some of these are more useful than others, but all are interesting tips or tricks that you may not know about the Volt. I got over some hidden storage compartments, infotaiment features, hidden menus, accessory mode and so much more!