Your fleet running reports

[scotta]

CarPlay is excellent to be fair - I tried the sat Nav in my golf once or twice before permanently switching to google maps/CarPlay.

I've never tried it yet - but it has to be the future. Car electronics are so slow to be updated; why not make the interface the best available, based on something everyone has in their pocket?

The 435D Courtesy car i had from BMW had it enabled and it was excellent. Ive also used it in a Hyundai Elantra we had in Australia. Also excellent.

[Shlergen]

Use Carplay in Superb, it's really good. Spotify, Maps of choice (Waze etc).

[NotoriousREV]

I really miss CarPlay, it was awesome in the Golf. My plan is to fit a double-din Sony CarPlay unit in my 911.

[Jobbo]

When I had my C-class it was less than 3 years old and came with the free 3 years of nav updates. You wouldn’t believe the argument I had with the main dealer to get them to update it. So I’m not surprised very few people got theirs updated. You can’t just buy a disc and update them yourself with Merc, there’s a licence fee to pay

I’m going to fit a CarPlay kit so I can use Google Maps, since there’s no better traffic data in my opinion.

Details of the carplay kit please - FIL has an E-Class coupe that could benefit from that.

I have the NTG4.7 COMAND unit; if his car is up to about 2015 it's probably the same but do check. More recent ones have simpler ways to enable Carplay. There are quite a few out there - the cheapest is Carlinkit which is about £250 on eBay or Amazon and takes 6 weeks to arrive from China. Not sure I'm going to go for that. Next cheapest is Joyeauto at about £311 from China (can only pay in EUR or USD so it varies a bit and you need to add exchange rate fees) and there's a thread on MBClub about it: https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w212 ... 4-7-a.html - the thing which puts me off that is that it says call quality isn't as good as the standard Merc bluetooth.
After that there are a few UK businesses offering similar things for £400-500; I am tempted to spend the bit extra for UK back-up. I've not seen any particular recommendations.

It's a fair bit just to enable Carplay (there is no other functionality it adds which I don't already have) but since it'll cost me ~£120 a year just to add live traffic to the in-built 2013 maps I think it's probably a reasonable price

[_andy]

Then 5 minutes talking about how no other car manufacturer offers stuff like this for free.

My Merc is a 2014 model; it came with three years of free sat nav map updates.

Obviously the maps in the car’s nav are still from 2013 because despite being serviced at Merc, they didn’t even bother to apply the free updates. FFS. Tesla have it right.

Tesla seem quite happy to remove features though on cars outside of the dealer network. People finding out they can no longer supercharge being the one I heard moaned at the most.

What Lord Elon giveth, he can also taketh away.

Dave!

I believe this was on salvage title cars in the US, i.e. crashed or flooded cars that have been repaired and put back on the road. It may also have prevented any fast charging, not just superchargers. I'm not 100% on the validity of this bit, but if true it seems a bit cuntish. Also I read somewhere that autopilot cars may not keep the feature when the original owner sells the car? Not sure if it stays with the original purchaser, i.e. they order another Tesla and move the autopilot over to it for free.

[scotta]

When I had my C-class it was less than 3 years old and came with the free 3 years of nav updates. You wouldn’t believe the argument I had with the main dealer to get them to update it. So I’m not surprised very few people got theirs updated. You can’t just buy a disc and update them yourself with Merc, there’s a licence fee to pay

I’m going to fit a CarPlay kit so I can use Google Maps, since there’s no better traffic data in my opinion.

Details of the carplay kit please - FIL has an E-Class coupe that could benefit from that.

I have the NTG4.7 COMAND unit; if his car is up to about 2015 it's probably the same but do check. More recent ones have simpler ways to enable Carplay. There are quite a few out there - the cheapest is Carlinkit which is about £250 on eBay or Amazon and takes 6 weeks to arrive from China. Not sure I'm going to go for that. Next cheapest is Joyeauto at about £311 from China (can only pay in EUR or USD so it varies a bit and you need to add exchange rate fees) and there's a thread on MBClub about it: https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w212 ... 4-7-a.html - the thing which puts me off that is that it says call quality isn't as good as the standard Merc bluetooth.
After that there are a few UK businesses offering similar things for £400-500; I am tempted to spend the bit extra for UK back-up. I've not seen any particular recommendations.

It's a fair bit just to enable Carplay (there is no other functionality it adds which I don't already have) but since it'll cost me ~£120 a year just to add live traffic to the in-built 2013 maps I think it's probably a reasonable price

Have you looked at COMMAND - i looked at them for DAB retrofit on his car - Its a 2012 - but they couldn't do it on his specific model. After thinking about it idont expect he'll be able to get carplay either as the car doesn't have nav so no colour screen.

[Jobbo]

Have you looked at COMMAND - i looked at them for DAB retrofit on his car - Its a 2012 - but they couldn't do it on his specific model. After thinking about it idont expect he'll be able to get carplay either as the car doesn't have nav so no colour screen.

There's no colour screen at all? I thought all Mercs of that era had a colour screen and could have the Becker Map Pilot fitted in the glovebox to add nav, even if you don't have the full COMAND from the factory? It would appear that most of these Carplay things are compatible with Audio 20 which is what I imagine he has.

[scotta]

Have you looked at COMMAND - i looked at them for DAB retrofit on his car - Its a 2012 - but they couldn't do it on his specific model. After thinking about it idont expect he'll be able to get carplay either as the car doesn't have nav so no colour screen.

There's no colour screen at all? I thought all Mercs of that era had a colour screen and could have the Becker Map Pilot fitted in the glovebox to add nav, even if you don't have the full COMAND from the factory? It would appear that most of these Carplay things are compatible with Audio 20 which is what I imagine he has.

Screen only has radio info on it and as far as i can tell is just black and yellow.

[Sundayjumper]

I finally did the coil-on-plug conversion on The Compact today.

Presumably for cost-saving reasons, BMW used a separate coil pack on the E36 Compact with old-fashioned HT leads to the spark plugs. This is less good than having individual coil packs, not least because the big quad-coil pack is very expensive to replace if/when it plays up. It's also a big ugly lump attached to the o/s strut top. Performance should be slightly better with individual coil packs but from write-ups I've seen it's about driveability rather than power.

Thanks to BMW's sensible approach to generally making things interchangeable, this is quite a simple [1] job. You need:

* Four coil packs from a 6-cyl E36, I had six in stock already. They're exactly the right length.
* Matching connectors for the coil packs. I did have them but bu**ered if I can find them now. Harvested six more from a s/h loom (ebay, £10.45).
* A mounting plate for the coils, as the M42/M44 was never designed to take these. That was £30.
* A bunch of M6 nuts & bolts.
* Wiring & soldering skilz.

First off remove the old coil pack & leads:

IMG_2550.jpg (154.86 KiB) Viewed 2033 times

Then make a custom loom and bolt it all together:

IMG_2551.jpg (110.94 KiB) Viewed 2033 times

I need to wrap the loom up and make it tidy. This pic was during the "check if it works" phase.

The old coil pack was attached to those two brackets on the turret. They'll be having a chat with the angle grinder tomorrow

The big round connector is for the diagnostics. I'm going to relocate that inside the car to help keep it out of harm's way.

RALLYCAR !



[1] in theory - if your car matches the official BMW wiring diagrams

[V8Granite]

I wonder how many times that ODB port has been mistaken for a screenwash filler over the years

Dave!

[integrale_evo]

Probably not many as the wash bottle is very big and obvious just the other side of the front strut!

[integrale_evo]

The single coil block is just a carry over / parts share from the 8v models which have the plugs going into the side of the head so wouldn't be suitable for a coil on plug system.

[Sundayjumper]

Neatly wired:

2718BAC6-A907-4951-BD4F-25FD47ACE900.jpeg (107.74 KiB) Viewed 1950 times

Done !

BAA5F122-D296-4D02-9093-6290820D9D27.jpeg (107.24 KiB) Viewed 1950 times

[Beany]

Hmm. Thought I heard an idler whine earlier in the week, checked it this aft while doing it's daily turn over/ten minute idle (to keep the battery going/see if it'll not start before I need it to start, etc) and no noise at all.

I'm gonna have to pull the belts off and check the idlers by hand, aren't I? Sigh.

[Rich B]

Hmm. Thought I heard an idler whine earlier in the week, checked it this aft while doing it's daily turn over/ten minute idle (to keep the battery going/see if it'll not start before I need it to start, etc) and no noise at all.

I'm gonna have to pull the belts off and check the idlers by hand, aren't I? Sigh.

if it’s not making the noise, why do you think you need to check it?

[Beany]

Hmm. Thought I heard an idler whine earlier in the week, checked it this aft while doing it's daily turn over/ten minute idle (to keep the battery going/see if it'll not start before I need it to start, etc) and no noise at all.

I'm gonna have to pull the belts off and check the idlers by hand, aren't I? Sigh.

if it’s not making the noise, why do you think you need to check it?

I don't know, just seems like something worth doing on a knocking on 20 yr old car!

[integrale_evo]

From what I remember it's only a torx bolt and couple of plastic clips to whip the fan out which gives loads of room to get a tool in and loosen the tensioner to slip the belt off and give all the pulleys a spin and a wiggle.

Just make a drawing or take a photo of the belt layout so you can put it back on in the right place

[Beany]

From what I remember it's only a torx bolt and couple of plastic clips to whip the fan out which gives loads of room to get a tool in and loosen the tensioner to slip the belt off and give all the pulleys a spin and a wiggle.

Just make a drawing or take a photo of the belt layout so you can put it back on in the right place

Oh, it looks nice and easy from the guides I've checked*, I'm just incredibly lazy. Spending the last few weeks not leaving the house hasn't helped this

*(most work on the front end of the engine looks genuinely quite straightforward and sensible on the E46, even the six pots, once you pull out the fan and shroud)

[mik]

Productive car related day today.

Replaced the thermostat on eldest miklet’s car. And since I paid for the part (all of £15) and guided him through it, he agreed to help me change front pads & discs on the Evora. Bought these ages ago (EliseShop discs and oem DS2500 pads) and had not got round to fitting them - but have some tingle from the front under braking which gets better after doing a bedding-in routine, but doesn’t dissapear completely. Which is usually a good sign they are humped.

Doing it with the boy slowed things down as I was making him do most of it and guiding him. Offside took a long time as we also hit issues like the disc alignment screw refusing to budge - it is a hex head (that takes an Allen key) but a size that was in-between the sizes I have for my impact driver - so that didn’t work. Big Torx driver to the rescue - straight off.

Near side then took about 40 mins from sliding the jack under to taking it back out again, massively easier once the process and tools were known.

Pads were fine, but - as is often the case - inner face of the disks showed more wear than the outer face. Guess this is down to hotter temps as they as inner face is less exposed to airflow.

Now to hatch a plan to get them bedded in....

[mik]

Forgot to mention - front hubs have inner spline, but there ain’t no driveshaft - wonder what they are from