E46 Stereo Woe

[highway]

Dad has an 02 E46 330D. Car has the early version of Bmw sat nav. Single din HU with tape deck and a small orange dot matrix display on the right showing an arrow, providing sat Nav. Alpine changer in the boot which works the the standard HU via an interface box.

I had a parrot fitted to the car a few years ago. The fitter successfully destroyed the head unit which ended up being replaced on an exchange basis at a dealership at some £500.

The HU has now developed an intermittent fault where it won't recognize the boot changer. I bought a replacement interface which was hard to source and a replacement boot changer. The fault remained.

Ended up buying replacement HU, changer and nav drive via Ebay which looked ident. Turns out this HU isnt a like for like swap due to different data connectors rather than speaker wires on the back.

I was hoping to get a factory solution. He doesn't use the nav much but it still works and I'd prefer OEM. Any suggestions? Cheers

[Jobbo]

I'm not sure whether the connections are the same for the nav units as standard head units but that nav is archaic - so the obvious solution is just to replace it with a CD head unit. The seller of this one has handily provided a photo of the rear so you can check whether it's the same as your nav unit:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bmw-e46-cd-head-unit-/28...

[gizlaroc]

You could put the double din unit in and update the nav unit in the back with a firmware disc to get it running on that screen.

Cheap as chips now and looks so much nicer.

[gizlaroc]

Actually, a handful of the nav units were back and white only, not many, but just check your serial number first.

[Jobbo]

gizlaroc said:

You could put the double din unit in and update the nav unit in the back with a firmware disc to get it running on that screen.

Cheap as chips now and looks so much nicer.

You've got to replace the heating and ventilation controls if you do that - isn't that quite an expensive thing to do because of the demand for replacing head units with Dynavin aftermarket ones?

[gizlaroc]

Jobbo said:

You've got to replace the heating and ventilation controls if you do that - isn't that quite an expensive thing to do because of the demand for replacing head units with Dynavin aftermarket ones?

You just need to buy the trim that holds the climate under the stereo, where the astray is now, it is around £35+vat from BMW, just a plastic cage.