Quote:
Originally Posted by S4Sprint
What is the latest update on your system?
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Been meaning to update this thread but have not had the free time recently, I'll update the first post later but as of right now, I've hit a snag. The place I was hoping could do the coding portion of the retrofit was not successful. Sounds like the new head unit I bought is vin matched to a different car and this prevented the shop I was at from being able to do anything at all. They said that if the head unit wasn't already matched to a different vin they could reflash the correct software. I was told they couldn't remove the vin themselves and that nobody could (which I sincerely doubt).
None of my options on where to go next are too appealing. I don't know anyone in my area that could do the coding necessary to remove the matched vin. I have feeling I could research the forum Jim posted about earlier and do the whole coding process myself. I don't have the time for that at the moment. That probably will be what I do however. My dealer referred me to a radio shop in Mass but I'm skeptical about whether they'd be able to do what I need done as well, not that I have had the time to give them a call yet. I could always try to purchase another usb head unit through bmw with an open vin but that wouldn't be cheap of course. The shop that failed to help me also suggested adding a wifi system to the car using some existing antenna within the car and then connecting my phone wirelessly allowing for the playing of music. The tech was really vague on how that system works, whether there would be meta tags displayed on the head unit and what exactly they would be fiddling with. Coupled with the hefty price tag of 1k for that wifi system I really don't find that option appealing at all.
I did learn some interesting information from bickering with my dealer, there are potentially 4 different professional head units for our cars, most of them look exactly the same with only the rear portions being different. One is the head unit from having a stripper car, no ports on the rear of the head unit. Two others are for usb and the cd changer respectively, I can't remember if the fourth was the idrive system or another professional head unit with some arbitrary connector on the back.
The overly loud gong is ok to live with, and the german voice commands don't seem to work even when prompted in german so I just avoid pressing the voice command button. The absolute most irritating aspect of this retrofit is the m button doubles as the audio source button, it's just a real pain in the ass compared to everything else.
tldr: I would be wary of purchasing a head unit from that ebay link, it was vin matched to another car and the shop I tried to have the coding done at couldn't reflash the software necessary due to this reason. I'll work out this coding problem later when I have time, in the meantime:
This retrofit was technically successful but left me with one damn annoying quirk and several others that are more or less tolerable. I would only go this route if you are knowledgeable with coding retrofits or can get your hands on an unvin matched head unit.