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Indeed, if the vehicle has TV as an option, then the fitted battery is the bigger battery of the two Reason: the car must be able to sit there with enough power reserve to watch TV for a while, and still have enough grunt afterwards to start the engine. Don't skimp on too small a battery. In those worst case situations: -15 degrees C + Car been sitting unused still for a week + Everything iced up ...you still want to be able to start the motor (PS: above describes me returning to my car after 1 weeks ski holiday, and very glad that the battery was good and the engine started)

If you are hearing "hiss", then you are likely listening to the limitations of your system Every audio system generates hiss and noise, and in a very quiet environment with good speakers, the hiss can be audible. Especially with very efficient tweeters. To verify where the hiss comes from try these tests - (tip: do them in the garage at night when everything is nice and quiet) Setup your music with some quiet music where you can hear the hiss present, or put the iPod on pause. Vary the volume and listen carefully If the hiss is constant no matter what the volume level, then you are listening to the hiss and noise produced by the power amplifier stages, and/or the radio module amplifier stages. If so, there is nothing you can do about it (apart from fitting less efficient tweeters!). If the hiss level varies with the volume control, then it comes from the pre-amp stages or from the ipod itself. Disconnect the ipod and listen to the hiss. Note that with the iPod disconnected, the stereo will easily pickup noise from the open inputs - eg if you touch the inputs with your fingers, you can inject hum and noise into the system. This is normal. If you have no hiss when the ipod is disconnected, then the hiss must come from the iPod. To reduce iPod hiss and noise, try the following: 1. turn off all sound processing .- Settings - Playback - EQ = Off. I found my iPod nano distorts the music when I turn EQ on, so I have it OFF all the time now 2. Rip your music at a better quality level (higher bitrate). This will improve the quality of the music, which may be more notable on the higher frequencies. You may have less noise on higher bitrate music. 3. Check the levels of the ripped music. Unlikely to be an issue, as most songs these days are encoded at the upper limits, and made artificially "louder" with less dynamic range. My older CDs sound so much better than newer music for this reason :-) And of course, there's always the possibility that you are listening to recorded hiss and noise that existed on the original studio recording. I have some tracks where the original studio hiss is very evident. dates from the days of reel-to-reel recoding equipment :-)

E46? remove rear seat back on CD changer side to reveal panel screwas Remove panel screws, emergency triangle holder, etc to remove side interior trim panel Then everything is exposed. The panel screw behind the rear seat squab is the hidden one :-)

Telephone. So easy to make telephone work in your car, get a ULF or a TCU and volia! Integrated bluetooth. Make sure you confirm wiring of the phone connector before plugging in to the ULF or the TCU because there were many different wiring options for the many different telephone options.

Go to a wreckers, cut a plug off a loom, and you'll loads of pins (+ wire if you cut the cable a ways back...)

It's what we call a NG radio with OG backl The radio is New-Gen with world tuner, but the main connector is still the old gen connector These were made when the E46 was changing from OG wiring looms to NG looms. The dual display and softkeys on the front panel can confirm the NG radio beyond any doubt. Note that this needs a NG antenna tuner

HID bulbs in non-HID ens is dangerous and illegal - the lens is not made for HID, and it scatters light into incoming drivers. Most countries require automatic headlight levelers to ensure that the light from a HID bulb cannot ever be mal-adjusted and blind oncoming drivers. Check your lens and reflectors are spotlessly clean, inside and out Fit new light bulbs, their output deteriorates with time.

E39 Touring Tailgate wiring loom runs down the right hand side C-pillar from roof to floor. That's the pillar just behind the rear seat. Remove the rear seat base and RH rear seat squab to access the wiring loom, then you can pick out the reverse light wire and tap into it. WDS shows the wire colours. E39 Touring has the following reverse light wires: Right hand lamp: blue/yellow Left hand lamp: white/yellow Note that the reverse lamsp are not active when towing (with the original BMW trailer module), if you want reverse camera active in this situation, use the LCM RFSI signal to activate the relay (5V low current relay required) The video module is located under the floor panel, right behind the rear seats, so the wire from the loom to the video module only needs to be about 1 m long. Much easier than working inside the tailgate. You'll have to unbolt the floor tie-down hooks to lift the floor panel. The tie-down hooks have a small plastic cover on top of the bolt, lift the cover off with eg a jewelers screwdriver. Relay current draw is not enough to upset the lamp check circuitry. You can test by having a relay connected and removing one reverse lamp bulb - see if the lamp failure is detected :-) If the lamp failure is not detected, then fit a different relay with a lower current draw. Did you fit a PAL or NTSC camera? If PAL, you'll need to change the coding on the Video Module (default = NTSC) NavCoder can change the coding for you.

Chime! With navigation, and with the original OEM bluetooth the Telephone option appears in the menu. I do not know if Parrot support this Otherwise, if you don't care about having Telephone appear in the menu, everything else will work, because the Parrot just drives the TELM telelphone mute line of the radio 8same for nav or no nav) and responds to key presses of the steering wheel buttons (same for nav or no nav) Of course, cable length will be a consideration! But please refer to the Parrot website and instructions for further details.

Australia is wrong, they use different channel settings to NZ. The correct setting was PAL Europe, then you get all VHF-I, VHF-II and UHF channels On my E39, I received all 11 free-to-air analog channels in Auckland, in varying quality depending on location, but the VHF channels were pretty good all the time You also get the Sky UHF channels, with the occasional channel being unencrypted :-)

Your circuit has an inherient unreliability in it: the fuel pump relay is switching the power always. Wire it like this +12V--------------[resistor]------[pump motor]------ground And then have the relay simply bridging the resistor. You'll get less contact sparking and greater reliability, because the resistor is in circuit during the switching time of the relay Which is the same as connecting relay contacts 30 and 87 on your own drawing

Yes! That car / nav system is ex-Japan To use in in NZ, replace the Japanese nav drive with a standard Euro Mk3 or Mk4 nav unit and it will work. When replacing the drive, you will need to change the connectors on the wiring loom for the nav, but that is straight forward Note: for the radio to work in NZ, you will need to replace the radio tuner with the equivalent Euro tuner.

Hi, Did you know you can convert your X5 Japane nav+TV system with not-so-nice fonts graphics to a full Euro compliant TV system 8without the nav) just by unplugging one connector? If you unplug the Jap nav, the system will reboot next time in TV-only mode, and you will have the standard Euro look and feel TV system, with nothing Japanese left in. That means: More screen real-estate Better fonts Multi-lingual for all 6 languages And it stays totally integrated with everything you currently have And if you don't like it, just plug the nav back in and reboot the system, and you are back to where you were. To try it: unplug the connector on the nav computer.

Turn off the cold monitoring and the warning message with my NavCoder software That is the simplest and cleanest way.

It's not what's on the head but what's in it that is crucial As a young green 20yr old I was loving working on vehicle electrical systems. And now it's even more fun - but I go right inside the chipsets and peek and poke a bit.

You can change the language just by changing the language in the Settings option from japanese to English This may be a challenge for you to find if your Japanese is limited, so visit your local sushi bar :-) As for converting the radio, it's a hurdle. Anything is possible but it requires changing software settings, changing hardware, and reflashing the car. Not for the faint hearted And cannot be done without specialist knowledge or tools.

You are right to be nervous, it is not an easy task to convert NZ is a ECE car, so anything ECE will work Part numbers change all the time due to policies of continued improvement. Refer to the parts database and the succession list to see what parts were used when, and what succeeded what

Answers to your questions: Q1 = yes Q2 = yes, programming required

BMW have 2 x options: TCU = Telematics Control Unit. This is the integrated bluetooth unit which pairs with your mobile phone in your pocket. Allows voice voice control and interagtion of phone book into radio / nav / instrument cluster (depending on what radio / nav / instrument cluster you have) The tCU also has the subscription Assist service. ULF = Universal charging and handsfree unit. This is also a bluetooth unit with voice control, but has the benefit that you can voice control your nav as well. No Assist. Installation instructions are readily available ULF and TCUs can be found on eBay 2nd hand Check if your car has the wiring loom fitted.

There are 5 different radio combinations for the E39 (disregarding other items like amplifier and speaker combinations) To answer your questions in detail, I'd need to know exactly what you have now, and the best way is to post a photo. If you already have a MID today, you just change the radio and keep your MID Only non-navigation systems have the tuner in the head unit. If you have navigation, the tuner is n the boot. Generally, you can plug-and-play swap out any old generation (OG) radio for a new OG radio OG = prior 20001-09, round-pins on main connector NG (new gen) = post 2001-09, flat pins NG means wiring loom adapters required, and replacement antenna amplifier required.

Note that Glenn has a policy of always fitting a brand new battery when replacing the alternator The theory is that a failing battery can load the alternator too much and thus cause the alternator to fail prematurely Given the low cost of batteries compared to the alternator, it would be a wise move. You then get a car that starts reliably again

A few things you can do youself: 1. Ensure the car is entering sleep mode. How to tell? open the boot so the boot light is on. Close and lock car, and wait. Check how long it takes for the boot light to go off. When it goes off, car is in sleep mode. Note it can take 15min for this to happen 2. Check navigation is powering down. Whilst waiting for car to go in sleep mode, observe the nav unit. The RED LED stays on until 60s after last ibus activity. Then it flashes rapidly (writing to flash) and goes off. If nav never shuts down, this can be a cause of high battery drain. Alternatively, use my NavCoder and monitor the databus in real time. 3. Disconnect a some non-critical systems and observe response. Eg: disconnect entire audio system by removing all audio system fuses. Observe what happens. Is battery drain still a problem? 4. Check alarm system. Check especially bonnet switch, try disconnecting the bonnet switch and observe what happens 5. Buy a clamp meter ammeter, and clamp to the battery cable. Wait for car to go to sleep, documenting the current consumption in on, off, and sleep mode Report your findings here

The chip is extremely easy to locate on the board - take the cover off and look, and you see it straight away. There is only 1 memory chip on the main board! But if you could not understand what I wrote then you do not have the knowledge or skills to locate, desolder and reprogram EEPROMs So print the instructions, take them with the radio to an electronics repair shop, and ask them if they can do it for you.

I've fixed a few of these The flash memory chip that stores the saved settings is corrupt and at end of life. Every read returns corrupt data. The chip is an 8p DIL chip, can be got from Jaycar for about $5 or so. 24LC16 SERIAL EEPROM 8 PIN DIP 16K I2C Electrically Erasable PROM Single supply voltage down to 1.8V Low power CMOS technology I2C compatible Schmitt trigger inputs Jaycar price NZD 4.90 It's the only memory chip on the whole board, so easy to locate. To repair: Remove old chip, read out contents with EEPROM programmer. Program new chip with same contents (the fixed memory area containing config and serial number etc is not corrupt) Solder new chip into board Problem fixed.

With the Euro E60 everything is in the dash - nav drive incl computer on the Euro car With the Jap car it has a separate nav drive in the boot. So you need to remove the JNAV in the boot and replace the CCC in the front with the Euro CCC and then go through the coding headaches. It would pay to study the wiring diagrams to confirm what config you have and compare to Euro car. Look for the WDS online. Study device N38a, that's the CCC/M-ASK, and it feeds the CID with a picture. CCC = car communications coontroller M-ASK = MOST audio system controller