[vtl]

CIC Navigation Professional Retrofit


Previously have the M-ASK Business Navigation system on my car. Mine is a Oct 2008 build so it came with a pre-lci Business Navigation system with the LCI controller (commonly known as a CIC controller)

Its actually not a bad system, despite being a cut down version of the professional CCC nav. The CCC system is an absolute pig, very laggy and slow. The business nav in my car is very responsive and going through the menus you never encounter lag. The downsides are lack of map updates and the fact that zooming in and out of the map is slow with the DVD based system. The screen is only 6.5" so its quite tiny.

I never use the navigation system for guidance but I do love having the map on the screen so I have more situational awareness on the road. Can use it in the twisty roads to see what kind of corner is coming up, or simply find my way out of the city to freeway without having to grab the phone for guidance where I already know 90% of the route home anyway.

Music integration is pretty poor with the M-ASK system too. Cheap bluetooth audio inputs work but don't allow track skipping or show the current song. Only thing that works is the Tune2air which is pretty pricey. The OEM combox can be sourced for not that much more than the Tune2air but only works on LCI navigation.

Have been on the lookout for a good deal on a CIC system, with the intention of adding combox to it. Saw a great deal on Gumtree in Sydney and titium was awesome in taking it down to Melb for me!

Was a full kit:
- CIC 8.8 screen
- bimmerretrofit.com emulator harness (with controller and screen power cables integrated)
- CIC nav unit
- CIC controller
- PATA 128GB SSD (good upgrade for the crappy HDD)
- USB glovebox cable and port

Easy install, only took a couple hours. Coded it myself. I have fitted a few of these units to some 3 series and happy to say the 1 series is even easier to fit it all. Ultimately it is not a massive upgrade for me (just bigger screen, newer and faster maps) but will be doing a combox retrofit to get some Bluetooth audio streaming and the other handy features it has. For a CCC system, this is a massive upgrade due to the lagginess of the CCC. The responsiveness is worth it alone.


For the DIY, it was pretty straightforward. The only thing I did was to desolder the grey wires from the emulator harness, these wires are for the screen's power cable and the cable for the controller. As my car already has nav, it already had the wiring and all I had to do was to transfer the CIC's screen new style plug onto my old plug. Using the factory wiring is a cleaner solution.

Coding was straightforward, at first the screen just showed a white screen but came good after coding. All I did was change my production date to 09/09, remove $606 (business nav) and added $609, and $6VA (pro navigation option codes). Adding these codes will allow you to code the CIC components, I coded the screen, nav unit and controller, didn't even have to execute FA_WRITE (didn't write the vehicle order to CAS and FRM)