Karter16

Another piece of the RSM/RACP brace puzzle arrived today. As part of doing the brace the rear trim and carpet needs to be cut for the brace. I'd rather not cut up my original pieces so am sourcing spares. This one though I had to buy new as finding one in New Zealand was too much of a struggle. The left hand side trim that came with my car includes the larger space for the CD stacker, etc. Given I've removed the stacker and am just running the hi-fi amp I wanted to get the left hand trim to go with it so that I have more boot space (plus it will be an easier cut for the brace. I was fortunate to find one on eBay at a very reasonable price with $39 international shipping (which was about $250 cheaper than shipping via Schmiedmann or the like) so I jumped on it, and it arrived today. Also apologies to anyone who is upset by me planning to cut up a brand new item. It upsets me too 🙃 BNIB

I would think the result would be the same with a heat gun. I would caution that for this particular use case you'd want a pretty fine nozzle on the heat gun so that you don't end up blasting everything with too much heat. The little flame jet I used was nice in that it was a small, controlled area.

I took a small, and carefully controlled amount of flame to the buttons on the front seat belt latches today. First up - please note that this process works to remove white oxidation and restore the red colour, but it will not work if the surface of the plastic has degraded too far. do not do this if you have any breakdown of the surface of the button. To begin with I carefully cleaned the surface of the button. If you're going to heat up the surface of the plastic you do NOT want any dirt, skin oils, grime, etc. to be on the button. To ensure that I cleaned this well I used a small piece of magic eraser (note that magic eraser is abrasive and wouldn't normally be recommended on car surfaces, however in this case because we're effectively resurfacing the button the slight abrasion doesn't matter and helps make sure that all the dirt is removed). For the cleaning step I used the magic eraser with warm water with dish soap in it and gave the button a good scrub (be careful to not let water get down into the latch), making sure I worked carefully around the raised "PRESS" letters. I then rinsed off the remaining soap with several rounds of clean water, before carefully drying the button with paper towel. I then left it a few minutes to ensure all moisture on the surface of the button had evaporated. Next step is to carefully use aluminium foil to shield the rest of the latch. I was very careful to make sure that the foil wasn't touching the button surface as we don't want to be accidentally bonding things to other things that they shouldn't be. I then used a towel to shield the wider area. This resulted in something that looked like this: The next step is to apply the fire. Firstly, ensure that you take all normal precautions around the use of fire. Secondly, make sure that your fire is clean burning. I used one of these because no matter how long I had a go at a piece of tin foil I could not get it to leave any carbon residue. If your preferred fire source leaves any carbon residue (black soot) at all, do not use it. I did not take photos of applying the fire. My advice is to go slow and carefully get closer with the flame jet until you see the surface change. I made sure to keep the jet moving the entire time and I took several breaks to ensure that I didn't get any part of the surface too hot. You do not want to end up applying too much heat in one place for too long and causing bubbling or smoking, you want just enough for as short a time as possible to get the surface to glass up. By being careful and going slow I was able to get a perfect result with no mistakes, it's a straightforward process so long as you carefully prepare and take your time. Hopefully it goes without saying to not touch the button or the foil for some minutes until the plastic has cooled. I'm very happy with the end result: And the passenger side: I don't need to do the rear seats as they already look perfect, so this job is done!

Time for an update on the CAD projects. CAD Project 1: SMG Expansion Tank bracket I now have a reproduction of the OE bracket that the tank slots into. This is a simplified bracket that doesn't have mounting holes, or the stand off that the original does. That's because I will be mating this to the other part of the bracket that I'm working on. Anyway I'm happy to have this part done. I won't be able to mate the two parts of the bracket together and finalise the part until I actually have the intake in hand so I can ensure everything fits perfectly. So this project will go on ice until then. CAD Project 2: Adapter for Bosch *101 MAP sensor And excitingly the adapter for the Bosch 101 MAP sensor is now done! I have a final print in CF-PETG which I will now clean up and bond to the sensor. Key differences from the last prototype I showed are: - Return to 1.5mm stand-off. in the CF-PETG 1.5mm is more than strong enough and this allows a bit more of the nose of the sensor to fit into the rail. - Ever so slightly widened body for better fitment. - Slight changes to some of the fillets to match the sensor. And here's some photos of it bolted to the rail (note that it is not bonded to the sensor in these photos). The bolt hardware is temporary just for demonstrating fitment. I'll be using Loctite 401 to bond the bracket to the sensor. The sensor itself is PBT which can be a bit tricky to bond, however my research suggests that Loctite 401 should be suitable to bond PBT and PETG together (and be heat resistant enough for the application). I'll post the end result when I have it all sorted.

Sourcing parts in general to NZ is a lot of effort. I would estimate that when I'm buying parts I spend about 4 times longer working out the cheapest combination of parts + shipping + GST + import duties than I do actually researching what parts I need to buy. It results in some seemingly non-sensical combinations. E.g. when ordering parts for CSL intake recently it was cheaper to order the CSL dipstick tube by itself from Turner, than it was to include in the rest of my package coming from Schmiedmann.

Recently I picked up a matte screen protector for the headunit. I wanted to give it a go and see if it would be an improvement over the glare that you get from the glossy head-unit screen. I wasn't able to find one exactly the right size so had to cut to size (which I got wrong slightly as you'll see in the photos). But it's good enough to try it out. If I decide I want to do this permanently I'll pull the head unit out and disassemble it so that I can get the screen protector across the entire surface of the screen so it sits perfectly behind the bezel. It's quite a big improvement. In the photos below I intentionally didn't clean the surface protector once it was on, so it has my fingerprints all over it. With direct lighting from behind onto the screen this was the most reflection I could get: And here's a couple of other photos (again with the same lighting conditions but photo taken slightly off-axis. I'm very happy with this so will try it out in driving conditions over the next few weeks and if I decide I want this permanently I'll pull the unit out and do it properly 🙂

This evening I also managed to make some progress on... CAD Project 1: SMG Expansion Tank bracket With the SMG expansion tank in hand I was able to measure up and design a copy of the bracket that the tank clips into. I measured up the tank: And was able to draw up the two profiles at the top and bottom of the clip, which results in a bracket looking like this: Again I've sent it off to Dad to have the first prototype printed. The second part of this is to 3D scan the strut tower and design up the other part of the bracket - if I get time tomorrow I'll get started on that.

Dad dropped off the the prototype this afternoon: And here it is fit to the sensor - I'm very happy with how well this fits for a first prototype. Very happy with how well it fits together and seems I even got the radiuses of the beveled edges right! It fits up nicely to the rail: Planned changes for the next iteration: - Enlarge mounting holes a bit to allow some wiggle room for the mounting bolts - Enlarge hole for sensor nose as I had to file it out slightly in this proto. - Reduce the thickness of the spacer plate. The piece is very solid and I think it will be better to reduce it back to approx 1.5mm so that the o-ring on the nose will sit a little bit lower in the air rail. Dad will also print the next prototype with CF reinforced PETG which should be a suitable end material with sufficient heat resistance for this application. Printing in the target material will allow us to check for any dimensional variance with a different material (proto 1 is just PLA). I think this should turn out well!

The CSL secondary air rail and SMG reservoir were waiting for me when I got home from work this afternoon. I took the opportunity of having 1 out of 2 children with the grandparents and made a start on... CAD Project 2: Adapter for Bosch *101 MAP sensor With the air rail and sensor now in hand I was able to check the fit and measure up: I was aware that you either have to trim the nozzle or stand off the sensor and that's fine, but I wasn't prepared for this: Now in practice this probably won't matter too much, but it's not as good a fit as I expected. Also as I had read elsewhere the o-ring will need to be replaced for a correctly fitting item. It's far too loose in this application. If people are buying this sensor and just chucking it on it's not going to be a good seal/fit, there's work to do to make this fit decently. So I decided to get on with it and draw up the stand-off plate + second mounting point. For reference here are a couple of close-ups of the mounting point on the rail. And here's some close-ups of the sensor: And this is the stand-off that we need to account for: It measures in slightly more than 1.5mm but I'm going to make the standoff 2.5mm thick to allow a little wiggle room. I knocked this up and have sent it off to Dad to have a first prototype printed for fitment checks: I'll report back on this when I have the prototype in hand. I expect there will be fine-tuning adjustments to make.

It's been a wintery weekend here and as I'm waiting on parts from Schmiedmann (they're on their summer break now - boo) I've been limited to more theoretical planning for future projects. While my main parts order from Schmiedmann is waiting on a few bits to come in they did manage to ship out my order with the CSL secondary air rail and SMG expansion tank in it. RockAuto have also shipped the *101 Map Sensor which means that by next week I should be able to get underway with prototyping for 2 of my little CAD projects. CAD Project 1: SMG Expansion Tank bracket The CSL has a mounting bracket that you rivet to the shock tower. Given one of my key goals with my build is to be able to reverse out my changes in the future I don't really want to drill holes in my shock tower. I therefore plan to adopt the same approach as others which is to fabricate a bracket to attach to the threaded stud on the shock down (which is a bit inboard and further back than where the SMG reservoir sits). Others have made a simple bracket out of aluminium which they attach the CSL bracket to. I plan to go one step further and create a 3D-printable piece that is moulded to the shock tower and incorporates the little bracket for the reservoir into it (to save having to purchase the little bracket and keep things nicely fitting and more streamlined. This of course won't look completely original as it will be somewhat visible in the engine bay, but I'm happy to accept this compromise to save mutilating my shock tower. I intend to use the faceID scanner on my phone to capture a mesh of the shock tower with which to design against. I had a play last night with the faceID scanner and it is very impressively accurate - looking forward to challenging my CAD skills a bit more (I used to know how to do this 15 years ago, so hopefully I can figure it out again). CAD Project 2: Adapter for Bosch *101 MAP sensor As I mentioned above I plan to design an adapter for the Bosch *101 Map sensor to space it out from the air rail appropriately and add on the second mounting point. With the rail and sensor due in my hands next weekend I should be able to measure up and have everything I need to prove out this idea. Looking forward to seeing if this will work. The other think I've been doing is some deep dive research into the "tune" side of things for my future CSL airbox conversion. I studied engineering at university, majoring in embedded systems engineering, however haven't really dived into the engine management world at all previously. It's an interesting area though and something that would be fun to figure out. I mentioned this somewhere previously but I've always thought that it's a shame for the CSL airbox conversion that there isn't a standard tune that can be applied for those who are swapping in just the airbox. If you think about it fundamentally BMW had standard tunes for the M3 and the CSL (well, actually more variants, US vs Euro, etc. etc.) but they were standard tunes that they applied for each difference vehicle configuration. The same thing should be possible for those swapping out the airbox, a standard tune that suits the specific configuration of the car. This would then save the hassle of getting your car tuned (which as we know really only focuses on WOT mappings anyway, so isn't really getting to the root of the problem anyway. Well, anyway, since I had those thoughts Bry5on has made breakthrough strides in this area with his Mullet Tune, which combines the VANOS and ignition tables from the standard M3 tune and the CSL tune together to get the best of both worlds. When applied along with the fuel map tuning process described here the outcome is all of the high end boisterousness of the CSL map along with the round-town refinement of the standard tune. For what I want this is ideal. I don't need to eke out a few more HP at the top end, or push timing to the max. I want a reliable OE-like tune that handles the CSL airbox on an engine with standard M3 internals. I spent some time this weekend with TunerPro and the CSL tune and the actual tune from my car currently, getting a handle on the various tables involved and looking at some of the differences between the two tunes - it's really very interesting looking at the VANOS tables and seeing just how much adjustment is made in the mappings for different conditions. Fascinating stuff. One thing I haven't figured out yet is the WOT tuning side of things. I need to work out the best place/way to install a Wideband sensor. I really only need this during the tuning process, so just need to figure out for a Euro-spec car where to put it while I'm datalogging. My presumption is that the standard CSL map is probably conservative enough anyway that running too lean wouldn't be a major concern in my case anyway, but will need to validate this. Beyond those specifics I'm just working through the significant amounts of documentation on the process in general, and documenting my planned workflow/steps to prepare the tune. Good fun.

I had some time today to get a few bits and pieces done. You've probably seem me previously bemoaning my headliner and B/C pillar fabric letting go. I realise that this is standard for an E46, but I dealt with this previously on my 318i, so I'm just over it this time around. Anyway, today I took out the B/C pillar pieces that needed fixing and re-glued the fabric using Scotch 77 Adhesive. It was pretty easy to do, the key things are to only apply the adhesive to the trim, not to the fabric (make sure the fabric is completely shielded). And then wait a few minutes for the glue to tack up and then very gently apply the fabric, gently brushing (caressing even) it with your finger. Being 20 years old the trim wasn't in perfect condition anyway, so it still has a few minor marks/scrapes from age, but will tide me over until I take the headliner out and redo it. Secondly I finally figured out how to get the right-hand encoder knob on the Xtrons mapped to iDrive Launcher to navigate the menus. See the video below for what I mean: IMG_9345.mov The video ends when I hit play in CarPlay,presumably my phone can't video and drive CarPlay at the same time. But what I was trying to show was that when ZLink (CarPlay) is open, the right knob can still be used to play/pause and navigate forwards/backwards through your playlist. To get this working you need to configure the short and long press on the right encoder button as follows in Factory Settings -> Touch Settings -> Panel Key (You can ignore my mappings of other keys - they're from experimenting and are not important) And turn on Control Mappings and map "Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Navigate left and Enter key as follows in iDrive Launcher Settings -> Controls. I'm very happy to get this going as Android stereos are renowned for the right encoder not being mappable. on the IX8246BHL the rotary encoder is mapped to KEYCODE_MEDIA_PREVIOUS and KEYCODE_MEDIA_NEXT and it is the fact that it is mapped to actual Android key codes that makes this possible. Please note that I have no idea whether this would work on any other Xtrons unit - you'd have to try it yourself. Limitations? I'm not too sure of what all the limitations are as I'll need to play around with it more first, but I'll update here as I find anything. Very happy to have this working properly now. I don't have any particular day to day burning need for it, but it was annoying me that I had it almost working but not quite.

If I'd known in advance how well this was going to work I'd have taken proper before and after photos, but first photo is about the best shot I've got of the bubbled dome. And after

Well that worked better than I could have hoped! The enamel paints arrived in the week and my wife is out this evening, so while I was keeping an eye on the boys I decided to do some colour tests. That went well and I had a go at painting by hand. I'm absolutely not skilled enough for it, but then I tried masking with sellotape and that worked surprisingly well, I was expecting the paint to seep badly, but it was very minimal. I very carefully masked for painting the light blue and the red and did those first. I found it was best to let the paint set for about 15-20 minutes before removing the masking (I didn't want to leave it too long and lift the paint with the tape). I then allowed an hour for drying, and then masked for the dark blue and painted that, another 15-20 mins for the masking and then another hour to harden. I then very carefully cleaned up the edges with a sharp knife before applying the black paint. For a hand-made effort I'm very happy with the end result. With the macro shot below you can see it's not perfect, but with the naked eye it looks perfect. Great success!

Glad to hear someone's picking up the hosting - thanks for all of your efforts @Jamez over the years!

As I'm sure everyone knows sourcing some E46 M3 parts is starting to get pretty dicey - Like some others I've started to modify my purchasing priority based on how likely I estimate it is that various things will go NLA. This is of course educated guess-work and I'm primarily focussing on anything CSL that I think I might need and second to that any of the more cosmetic pieces. I guess/hope that more regular mechanical components will be more likely to remain in availability for longer. To that end although it's not likely that I'll get to doing the airbox any time soon, I've ordered all the ancillary parts that I'll need to do it when the time comes. I've been monitoring some of these parts pretty closely and it certainly seems for some of them that we're coming to the end of availability (unless BMW decide to do further production runs at any point). I'll put these parts on the shelf and will order the airbox and whatever snorkel solution I decide on closer to the time.

Yeah - thought that was probably the case - I think most that came here would have had the CD stacker.

Hi all, Does anyone happen to have any/all of the interior carpets etc. from an E46 Coupe (Vert/Sedan is not the same) hanging around? I am after the following: Trim panel left (51478266567) This is the left hand side carpet - I'm specifically after the version for cars that do not have the CD change in the boot. Trim panel right (51478212400) This is the right hand side carpet Trunk tray left (51478193797) Tray for the left hand side that matches with trim panel above Removable panel for luggage compartment (51478266559) This is the solid boot floor insert Trunk mat(51478232347) This is the carpet layer on the boot floor Thanks very much

Embarked on a bit of an experiment this afternoon. The SMG shifter on my car is actually in pretty great condition considering it's nearly 20 years old. Aside from needing a clean really the only wear/damage on it is the emblem has bubbled as they tend to do, the pads and the chrome are otherwise in excellent condition. BMW do not sell the emblem separately, and although you can get replicas off eBay, they are poor quality (essentially printed with a dome on top) and don't replicate the 3D chrome embossing, etc. that the original does. I thought therefore that I would pull the knob apart and see if I could work out a way to repair it. If I fail then I can just go ahead with the original plan to buy a new one. If I succeed I'll probably still buy a new one anyway and put it on the shelf for the future, but I can then continue using my existing one. Removing the knob from the shifter was actually easier than I was expecting. A moderate amount of force and off it came. You can see the bubbled emblem in this photo (although if you own an SMG you probably already know what I'm talking about). I then carefully levered off the emblem. Because it had already bubbled it split from the backing as you'd expect. The backing of the dome is a foamy sticky substance which pulled off in one go. With the dome off the rest of the knob can be disassembled. Once in pieces I carefully cleaned everything up (vinegar and water on the chrome to clean on any staining, and then warm soapy water for a general clean and to clean the pads). I then turned my attention to the emblem. The chrome embossing is essentially milled/cast in relief on the underside of the dome, and then chrome plated. The flat back of the dome then affixes to the black background which also has the coloured M stripes on it. My intention in attempting repair is to paint on the M stripes, and then paint the entire rear surface of the dome black. The finished item can then be reaffixed to the knob. Why paint? It's going to be the only way to get a perfect bond to the dome. Otherwise without this it's still going to look like there's an air bubble in there. I am not going to attempt the painting myself, rather I am going to get my brother (who has been expertly painting very tiny things for a long time) to give it a go - if he can't do it I certainly wouldn't be able to. But before it can be painted I needed to clean up the dome. I very carefully wet sanded the back surface of the dome with 2000 grit sandpaper. It can't be seen in the photos but where the coloured M stripes go you can actually see on the surface of the dome where the colours lay. I was very careful to not sand this area, in order to retain this as it may be useful for my brother when it comes to applying the colour. I'll get the dome to him next weekend for him to have a go. The nice thing is that if anything doesn't go to plan it can just be sanded off and attempted again. In the meantime here's a photo of the rest of the knob all cleaned up and ready to go. The pads in particular look so nice now they're back to a lovely matte black.

Yeah I'm very pleased with it - very nicely made, and it should look great once I've got it powder coated.

Good question - I always use Apple Maps through CarPlay so hadn’t checked. I rebooted the unit and by the time I got into GPs tester it was locked on at 5m accuracy so seems fast. Note that signal strength is average as I just have the gps aerial inside the dash. re reverse sensors - I don’t have them hooked in currently, will likely get the iBus app at some point and do it that way.

Pleasant surprise this morning - look what arrived! The box it arrived in was a bit beaten up, but when opening up you can see that the sharp corners are well-wrapped in bubble wrap to protect whatever else it comes into contact with 😂 Marin offers powder-coating as well, but after discussing with him I opted to get it unfinished and powder-coat locally, as a painted item requires much more packaging to protect it and pushes it into a more expensive shipping category. I was a bit surprised when I first opened it to see that the brace doesn't have the extra cross member between the strut towers, but looking back on my comms with Marin when I actually placed the order I was not clear on the matter. Secondly, now that I've seen this in person I can say that that additional cross member would be entirely unnecessary anyway. The photos (especially the ones online) really do not give a good sense of just how solid this thing is. I'm glad that it turned out this way as not having that cross member means more available boot space for any odd-shaped objects. I'm very happy with the build quality of this and just how solid it is in person. I'm looking forward to getting it powder coated and ordering the other bits and pieces I need to get this installed.

I got a short period of time today to do a couple of things. Firstly I was able to take the car for a bit of a longer drive on mixed suburban roads and motorway. Suffice to say I am very, very happy with the improvement that the solid coupler has brought. In saying that it's important to note that I'm coming from a 20 year old OE rubber coupler to a solid coupler. It's likely that much of the improvement would also be seen with a new OE coupler. Although it should be noted that Bry5on has tested new OE and solid back to back and also saw improvements beyond the OE item. Having read his description of the improvements, my experience is the same, but magnified further because my old unit was so worn out. Gone is almost all of the deadness around centre, previously when the wheel engaged the steering rack and started turning the wheels the first part of the rotation felt spongy (which will have been as the worn out rubber giubo loaded up). That is completely gone and steering now feels much more linear either side of centre. Bry5on mentions improved granularity above, and I'm seeing exactly the same thing, it's as though the minimum amount of steering change you can make is smaller and more precise. Showing my age a bit here but it's the steering equivalent of going from SD to HD (or for the youngies it's the difference between cheap Netflix and expensive Netflix) everything is precise and feedback is better - when going from a worn coupler to solid/new the improvement is NOT subtle. Beyond maintenance/reliability work I try to focus the work I do on the car to get the best improvement to driving experience for the money I spend, and this change would easily be in my top 3 (alongside a brand-new steering wheel and the CSL bucket seats). When reading Br5yon's build thread I see that he also replaced the bushes on the lower steering column. I can't detect any undesired movement of the steering wheel laterally, but will swap them out anyway I think as they will no doubt be worn to some degree after 20 years. The second thing that I got the chance to do is to take some vaguely decent photos of the Xtrons head unit to use in my 6 month review of the headunit. Now that I've owned it for a decent period of time and had the chance to use it I think I'm at a point where I can make some overall observations of my experience with it. It's important to note up front that I've spent years reading all of the threads of people struggling and having issues with their Chinese-sourced headunits, and for a long time I had no intention of owning one, so when I eventually decided to give the Xtrons a go, it was not with the highest of expectations. Keep this in mind as you read my comments as my view of the unit may be affected by my initial low optimism. Secondly note that I'm very familiar with technology/computers/embedded systems/etc. so I'm very comfortable digging round in the guts of OSs and trying things out. That said I haven't had to do anything with this unit beyond some adjustment of some factory settings. Why an Xtrons? I was planning for a long time to install a head unit from a tier-one manufacturer of aftermarket headunits. Unfortunately they all suck (in my opinion) in particular going with such a unit I would obviously be giving up all pretence of OE looks. I was okay with giving up the OE look in exchange for reliability. Unfortunately the more I read the more it became apparent that I wasn't going to get the reliability I was after. I therefore eventually decided that I would have a go with a Chinese unit, and if it wasn't suitable, I'd then try a tier-one headunit. So why Xtrons over Dynavin, Avin, etc? Avin was a no-go, I've seen far too many complaints about them. Dynavin's new units have the Dynavin logo on them, have chunky buttons, and maintain the buttons on both sides layout of the original unit. In my opinion all 3 of these things were negatives. I certainly didn't want to end up with a tablet stuck to the dash, but I also felt that the layout of the Dynavin was unnecessarily dated, especially given the unit would spend most of its time in CarPlay. I was then drawn to Xtrons in particular because Obioban has one and had talked about it positively. What unit? I ended up choosing the IX8246BHL, because it was the highest-spec'd unit in that form factor that was available. Is that overkill for essentially running CarPlay? Yes probably, but while I have regretted having technology spec'd too low, I have never regretted having it spec'd too high, and for the comparatively small cost difference it was a no-brainer for me. As an aside some of Xtron's other units for the E46 are marketed as having "Automotive quality components". I've seem some discussion in the past about what the difference is. I reached out to Xtrons about this and was advised that the marketing was used on older units where that was a new addition, however for newer models like the IX series that marketing was dropped, as all their units now have "Automotive quality components". Purchasing and Shipping I ordered the unit on a Sunday afternoon from Xtron's website, and it was shipped from Singapore, and arrived at my house in Auckland, New Zealand 3 days later. Those of you who do not live in New Zealand probably won't appreciate how impressive this is. In short purchasing and shipping was super easy - I thought I'd messed something up with the order and reached out to Xtrons support, they got back to me and answered my query within hours. Installation The headunit comes with a lot of wiring looms and accessories, and when you open the box I can see it easily seeming a bit overwhelming, however the documentation is good enough to understand what needs to be done, and in my case (6 CD changer, no Nav) was as simple as using the ISO connector to hook into the car wiring, plus plugging in a few accessories like the CAN interface, GPS, Antenna, etc. I opted to not wire any USB connectors, 4G, etc. as I have no use for them. Given I didn't already have nav I had to relocate the HVAC controls, etc. which is all fairly straightforward as well. I had the unit in and everything done in a couple of hours (of which at least 20% was getting the centre vents out). The unit fired right up and everything was good. I needed to do a couple of minor settings changes (set the unit to RHD as it's LHD by default, but all straightforward. Fitment/Build Quality I have to say seeing the unit installed in my car it looks like it fits the interior better than I was expecting it would. I'm very glad I went for the wide-screen format with the buttons underneath, I think it makes the best use of the available space and is a great balance of modernity while still fitting in to the dash (as best as a touch screen is going to in an older car like the E46). The display is excellent and the touchscreen is accurate and reliable, no missed taps or the like. It is a shame that, like all these units, the screen is glossy rather than matte, particularly when displaying darker colours it does suffer from light reflection. I might give a quality matte overlay (like 3M produce) a go at some point to see if it's an improvement). The unit dimensions are good (with one exception) and it appears to match the crease in the dash well. The buttons are okay, at first glance they match the rest of the E46 buttons but there's a couple of things that aren't quite right. Firstly the typeface is not correct 😞 It would have been really great to see Xtrons matching this properly. Secondly the white parts of the buttons which illuminate seem to have a slight translucency to them compared to the genuine buttons, which gives them a slightly different look especially under brighter light. These things aside the buttons feel pretty good, although if you press hard on the outer buttons you can see the adjustment knobs flex slightly, presumably the board the buttons and knobs are attached to isn't supported as well as it could be. The centre button is in fact not a button, but a is a removable cover for the micro SD card. This is a pretty good solution, but of course means that the centre button doesn't illuminate, again a slight annoyance. The control knobs actually fit the interior pretty well. The chrome seems off in isolation, but particularly in my SMG it helps tie everything together, matching the chrome on the lighter cover and the SMG shifter/ring. I'm counting this as a win. The knobs themselves aren't anything to write home about (not compared to the items on the OE stereo), but they're not awful, and they work well enough. Other things to note. The headunit body is black plastic, that in texture matches well. In colour, if you look closely (it's more apparent in the photos than in real life) the black has a different base to the rest of the car. The Xtrons black is warmer/yellower than the OE black (which is cooler/more cyan). In practice this isn't really noticeable, but worth calling out to be aware of. I mentioned above that the unit is well dimensioned and fits well. This is true in all regards with one exception. The clip receptacle for the dash trim that runs above the radio is simply not right. I had to significantly modify this downwards in order to fit the trim correctly without it being pushed up. Photo below shows how much it's off by. Performance The headunit is blindingly fast. Navigating the OS/apps is seamless, every transition is smooth, I have zero complaints about performance. CarPlay CarPlay support was the key reason for me making this upgrade, if it didn't work reliably then the unit would be a no-go for me. First-time I turned the unit on and connected my phone to bluetooth CarPlay (actually the ZLink app) fired up. It's so satisfying to get into the car with your phone in your pocket, and by the time you're reversing out of the garage CarPlay has fired up and you're listening to your music. And how has the reliability been? To begin with, from time to time (every couple of weeks) I'd encounter an issue where I'd get into the car and CarPlay simply wouldn't connect. The headunit would show my phone was connected, and my phone would show that it was connected to the headunit, but no dice. Seems like not a very good start, however at the same time I was having trouble with my phone connecting to the wired CarPlay in our MG ZS EV (exactly the same symptoms). Secondly the way to resolve the issue was to reboot my phone (nothing needed to be done on the headunit side in either car). These two things made me suspect the issue lay with iOS/my phone, and indeed this was subsequently proven true when an iOS update (can't remember what version) was released in March, and the occasional issue simultaneously stopped happening with both vehicles. Since then CarPlay has been perfect - it works exactly as I hoped it would. Audio Quality I will caution my comments here by saying I am in no way an audiophile. Audio quality, to be honest I cannot tell any particular difference between the Xtrons and the OE radio the sound that the Xtrons produces is entirely acceptable to me and I have no complaints. Noise is very low and is not noticeable. There is an issue with some IX units whereby the difference between volume level 4 and volume level 5 is larger than it should be. Xtrons are supposedly working on a fix for this, but it hasn't bothered me as this is outside of my normal range of use anyway, so isn't affecting me. I'll patch the unit when the patch is available and report back on this. In one of my earlier posts I describe how I used HouseCurve and REW to generate DSP settings for the built-in DSP in the Xtrons unit. This resulted in a significant (as in even I could tell the improvement) improvement and I'm very pleased I went to the trouble of doing this (this isn't about the headunit so much as tuning it to the car's speakers and soundstage. Other changes I've made I've made some other various changes that are worth noting. 1: I loaded a custom boot logo to the unit. This boot logo is a high-res reproduction of the original boot logo on the E46 nav. I feel it's a nice additional touch to make the unit feel more OE. It's worth noting that others report seeing a "Powered by Android" logo as well. I only ever see this if I do a hard reboot of the unit, I never ever see this in day to day use. I don't know why, or what setting I might/might not have that impacts this, but worth calling out. 2: I've replaced the Xtrons launcher with iDrive Launcher which is a fantastic, well put together, piece of software which further does wonders to make the unit feel like it fits in the E46 interior. Overall Thoughts What are my overall thoughts on this headunit? I'm very happy I bought it! It has turned out to be significantly better than I was anticipating, and in particular has been reliable, which is absolutely key for me. Knowing what I now know I think that this unit provides the best combination of newer technology in a form factor that matches the E46 dash as well as it can. The package that Xtrons have put together works well, and some fairly simple customisations have this unit at a point where I doubt there is a better (for me) option out there. There is no way prior to owning this unit that I would have ever recommended someone buy one of these units, now that I've owned one I would happily recommend people consider it (with all the caveats I've listed above). I look forward to updating on my ownership next year - hopefully it has continued to be a pleasant ownership experience. I don't think I've missed anything from this review, but if I have I'll add it here.

Yeah I would imagine that they would be pretty similar, I'm sure a new OE coupler would have given me much the same benefits (at more than twice the cost).

Quick project today to replace the rubber steering giubo with a solid couple from CMP. In the last little while I've had noticeable deadness around centre. The car tracks fine on the road, but small steering inputs are annoying as you have to steer through the deadness before you can make adjustments. I thought it was likely this was the giubo, but can never tell until you try it. Note: For those of you with LHD please note that you cannot use this item in your LHD car. LHD cars rely on the rubber giubo to account for the slight off-axis play needed in the LHD column. The RHD coupler is different and includes a universal joint, so a solid coupler like this is just fine for RHD, but a no-go for LHD. I recently saw a very sad thread on Facebook where someone asked for peoples' experience with the CMP solid coupler and it was roundly rubbished by a number of people who had used it on their LHD car. Shame for CMP as they make it clear it is an RHD part and sucks to see uninformed customers rubbish a product when they're the ones who have used it incorrectly. Anyhow - this was a pretty quick project. I'd painted the coupler with matte black enamel as I'm not keen on the flashy purple for my build. The removal of the coupler is trivial, dismantling it and rebuilding is likewise simple so long as you take your time and make sure you prepare the mating surfaces well. All up the project took me about 3 hours to do. From reading about others experiences of before and after with a solid coupler I was expecting a mild improvement and no additional NVH. Mine must have been very worn as the difference between before and after was not mild. I could tell as soon as I started manoeuvring the car in the driveway. The rubber was not broken or degraded in any way, but was soft, so the solid coupler has made a massive difference. Steering play is gone and the steering feels more direct and is less spongy. As expected I don't get any unpleasant NVH - just more precise steering control. $100 well spent.

Yeah it’s great - I was stoked when I came across it - I was surprised I hadn’t heard about it before