INPA DSC Brake Bleed

doublespaces

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This is a supplemental process to bleeding your brakes the normal way with a pressure or vacuum bleeder. You'll need to make sure you have plenty of brake fluid, because each procedure tends to drain the fluid reservoir almost completely.

Make sure you have an OBD cable connected to the car and INPA installed.
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When doing this bleeding process on a Left Hand Drive vehicle which has the DSC unit on the left side, you want to make sure you start with the right rear wheel, then move to the left rear, then front right, then front left. If you have dual piston calipers you may need to bleed that wheel twice, once with each valve open.

Start by opening up INPA and select the chassis that applies to your vehicle. F2 for E9X and Shift+F7 for E8X.
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Next, select the chassis option and double click on Dynamic Stability Control on the right. If your cable is plugged in correctly, you'll get an error about versions and language not matching.
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If you get another error, your cable is probably not connected properly. Try restarting your computer and make sure the cable is plugged into the car and computer before opening INPA.

Next, hit F6 for Activate.
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Then select the DSC rework bleeding option for the wheel you are starting with, in this case Shift+F4 for the Right Rear wheel.
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It will then tell you to open the Right Rear bleeder screw, make sure you have a bottle hooked up to this valve or it will be spraying fluid all over the place. I recommend a fairly large bottle because it can easily overflow the small containers that come with vacuum bleeder kits.
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Once you've opened the screw about one turn, click OK on INPA.

You'll now get a series of prompts which you must respond to in real time. These prompts can vary, and the messages might differ slightly. Just press the brake down until you can feel it stop and hold it there, then release when it tells you to.
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Depending on some factors it will repeat this process a few times. When its done, it will tell you to close the bleeding screw.
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Refill the brake fluid reservoir with more fluid, and repeat the process for each wheel.
 
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dyezak

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I would suggest ISTA+ for this as it includes a feedback loop. ISTA knows if it wasn’t done right and makes you do it again.
 

doublespaces

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I would suggest ISTA+ for this as it includes a feedback loop. ISTA knows if it wasn’t done right and makes you do it again.
I opened up ISTA. And it from the options menu I was at, it only said to activate the valve or not. Didn't appear that there was going to be any sort of feedback process. What do you browse to in order to activate this bleeding procedure you're referring to?
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dyezak

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It's just the regular bleed process. But just for giggles I did it without following the directions (didn't pump the brake pedal) and at the end it told me that I may have not gotten it correct and that I should do it again. I was pleasantly surprised.
 

doublespaces

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INPA does the same thing, if you don't press the pedal it will abort. Also, I did the rear brakes a second time just to see, and it said it was done after one step.
 

PUTC

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I’ve been meaning to try this. I did a very generic bleeding when I first bought car. I can’t seem to get my c++ to the ooint where I can finish install of INPA. software errors on my laptop. Anyone else ever have issues with that?
 

doublespaces

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I’ve been meaning to try this. I did a very generic bleeding when I first bought car. I can’t seem to get my c++ to the ooint where I can finish install of INPA. software errors on my laptop. Anyone else ever have issues with that?

A lot of it is related to which installation you use, as well as over-writing the old installation files with the modified ones. You'd have to post up exact errors before I would be able to help ya out.
 

PUTC

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I’ll see about getting you the error codes soon. Just to make sure, we are talking about Rheingold, right? I have all the standard tools working fine finally.
 

doublespaces

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I’ll see about getting you the error codes soon. Just to make sure, we are talking about Rheingold, right? I have all the standard tools working fine finally.
Rheingold is ISTA D, INPA is something else.

I did install ISTA, but honestly there were a few tricky things I don't recall, partly because I think I got it from a source that was different than most people.
 

PUTC

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Is inpa in standard tools? I just don’t remember ever seeing that screen before. Why can’t these programs have better names, very confusing to the noob like me. Inpa, ista d, ista p, etc... any links to a good INPA file?
 

doublespaces

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Is inpa in standard tools? I just don’t remember ever seeing that screen before. Why can’t these programs have better names, very confusing to the noob like me. Inpa, ista d, ista p, etc... any links to a good INPA file?
Yes, it is in the 'standard tools' package. The screenshot above is from ISTA/Rheingold. I'm just replying to your previous comment where you said you couldn't get INPA installed.

If you need help with ISTA, I'm not much help. Even my installation isn't completely installed, as I ran out of drive space and had to hack stuff up. All the links in the WDS are broken, nothing happens when I click the names of the connectors.
 

PUTC

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Oct 14, 2017
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I appreciate it man. I have INPA working just fine, flashed a few times Alpina/2011 sport and have coded injectors and such. ISTA is messin with my emotions right now. It’s a c++ issue at the moment that I have no clue how to fix. Won’t install basically. I wish we had 30hr days, then I might be able to accomplish more
 

island road

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@dyezak I am doing the brake bleeding now on my E61. I have ISTA+ and can view the directions they have and also as @doublespaces already mentioned though ISTA+ I found that I can activate the ABS motor to pump. I keep reading about a using ISTA+ and it lets you know that you have done it correct with a loop as you mentioned but can't seem to find that function within the program itself. My ABS pump ran a bit dry so i'm trying to have it go though the whole system to make sure everything is correct.

Any insight as to exactly how you used ISTA to perform that action would be awesome. Also I can't use INPA because it does not have the correct module for the E61.
 

dyezak

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I don’t know what I did wrong, but one time I did the process I got a message stating that I needed to redo the whole thing. Perhaps it only detects certain issues and not everything.
 

island road

Corporal
Nov 21, 2016
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Boston
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I don’t know what I did wrong, but one time I did the process I got a message stating that I needed to redo the whole thing. Perhaps it only detects certain issues and not everything.

The thing is I don't know the steps in ISTA as I cant find it within the program. I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction.