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BMW E38 7 series
Navigation Retrofit (95 740i)
Main Parts Required
BMW Navigation
computer - MKII, MKIII or MKIV - $750 Available from Bimmernav
BMW Navigation
Display - 16:9 Widescreen - $750 Available from Bimmernav
Navigation
Display Plastic Frame 65 52 8 385
450
$24.89
BMW wiring
harness - E38 (I used a 2003 x5 harness w/DSP to allow AUX
input and Satellite ready for stereo- more on this later) -
$250
BMW Trunk
mount radio - Old Style (pre 2002) or New Style (post 2002 -
REQUIRES X5 harness or adapter cables from BMW) - $430
Center Console
Instrument Panel Frame 51 16 8 175 064 - $73.20
Navigation
Computer Bracket 65 90 8 369 053
-
$13.48
Navigation
Computer Plastic Frame 51 47 8 177
689 $8.44
GPS
Antenna
65 90 8 375
944
$72.55
GPS
Antenna Mount 65
90 8 360
725
$4.55
GPS
Antenna
cable
61 12 8 377
434
$23.06
Trunk
Radio Bracket 65 12 8
375
189
$11.71
Radio
ANTENNA CABLE 65 24 8 361
023
$18.12
Trunk
Panel Cover (opt) 51 47 8 186
699
$175 - SAVE YOUR MONEY on this part. You can cut out the old
piece!
Four 2.6M 10mm
screws to attach the display to the chassis. $0.45
Total cost
with parts from places like Ebay and Pacific BMW 1-800-909-PART around
$2,456 for new parts. Around, maybe $1,000 less for used parts
for the 4:3 and MKII or MKIII install. Plus, you can offset
some of your costs by selling your old equipment.
Step 1) attach
your navigation parts to the wiring harness, and plug the
wiring harness into the Radio wiring harness connector located
in the trunk to verify your connections. In the picture
below, I hooked a TV video module up to drive the nav
display. I had mine working in the trunk in less than 10
minutes. Super easy. Just plug up the parts and plug into
the car with the radio plug (see next image)
The Main radio
harness connects to the dash mount radio and runs the length
of the car. This harness is the "TOP HIFI" Harness, and looks
like a Black x400 plug
this Black plug
is located on the back side of the tail lights near the phone
TCU
Once you get the
system operating in the trunk, the next step is to modify your
harness to save time and effort on the install. I unwrapped
the fabric tape and removed the 26 pin connector and all of
the speaker wires from my harness, as I planned on using the
existing DSP speaker wiring.
Once I removed
the 26 pin harness, and disconnected the OLD radio harness, it
became obvious that I was going to need to provide power,
ground and "remote power on" lead to the DSP. BMW makes this
simple, as the power and ground are spliced into a junction
point on the old and new harness. I just removed the DSP 15
pin connector from the x5 harness and spliced in the power
ground and remote turn on lead from the car's harness to the
x5 harness.
Next pin 2 on
the main harness in the 95 goes to a relay so that accessory
power can get more “juice” and they would not have to run it
on the main radio harness. No big deal, I just moved the relay
to the new harness. I will have to provide some pictures on
this as it is simple, but not easy to explain.
THESE FOUR WIRES
WERE ALL THAT I NEEDED TO SPLICE IN MY ENTIRE NAVIGATION
RETROFIT!!!
See below images to understand
what the junction points look like on the navigation harness.
Once you unwrap the fabric tape on the harness you will find
splice points that look like the images below (top one with
cover on, and bottom with cover removed). In my install, I
did move the Ground wire on the amp, but later found out it
was not required. You should only need to move 3 wires,
power, remote turn on for amp, and possibly move the wire from
pin 2 on the old radio harness to the new radio harness
depending on the location of the accessory power relay. This
relay is obvious as it is mounted just above the rear wheel
well and has 4 wires coming out of it. One wire goes to the
radio, one to the radio harness, and the others for power and
ground.
Since I was
using the X5 harness for a DSP system on the E38, I just used
the entire 18 pin harness from the x5 harness and plugged it
into the DSP amp.
The 18 pin
connector that WAS in the original car harness, can be removed
from the car, or just taped off. The 18 pin connector goes
from the DSP amp and split between the Radio wiring plug in
the trunk and dash mount radio in the front. As you can see
the main power line goes to the DSP amp needed to be removed
and then the new X5 harness needs this wire jumpered to the
DSP amp. The purple wire that is cut in the bottom of the
picture goes to the accessory power relay for the radio. The
other wires going to the radio are no longer needed as the New
X5 harness has these already in place.
Running the
wires for the navigation display were not that difficult,
since I was reusing the existing speaker wires. As a matter
of fact, I was able to run the wires very easily up the center
console, as one might do for a full car phone retrofit. I
started in the rear compartment and just traced the route of
the phone connection
This route leads
to just below the rear arm rest where you can find a nice
passageway thru. It was hard to photograph, but you can see
the black plastic passageway, just at the bottom of the metal
and top of the insulation.
To gain access,
you just have to remove the rear seat and unscrew the two nuts
that hold the arm rest in place. Once you remove these nuts
you can lift up on the arm rest and it will expose a nice
passageway for the wiring. Again, it was hard to photograph
this, but you can see the passageway in the black blurry area.
Continue to
follow the phone wiring passageway until you reach the under
the carpet tunnel
At this point
you should start working on the center console. I followed
the www.e38.org instructions
for removing the center console, which was not that
difficult. I did not remove the center console, but just
lifted it enough to get the harness under the carpet using the
under the carpet tunnel
Using this path I was easily able to get the harness up front
with plenty of slack
Plastic wiring "Tunnel" To gain access to the under the
carpet tunnel, gently lift up on the carpet and loosen the
nuts. Once the nuts have been removed you can gently pry up
the plastic to gain access. What I did was attach a string to
the coax cable in the center console, then I pulled it through
the tunnel. Once I got the string to the back of the carpet,
I used the same string to pull the coax wire back to the
center console. Then I removed the white and blue plug covers
on the two connectors, and attached them to the same string
and gently pulled them through as well.
Once the wires
are through the tunnel you can find an easy path to the center
console for running the wires
With the x5
harness I ended up with Lot's of extra slack
Although my install was in a 740i, it appears that their would
be plenty of slack to cover the iL
Once the New
frame is in place, you are almost done up front
Now that the
work inside the cabin is complete, the rest of the work is
pretty basic stuff
Mounting the GPS antenna is easy. Just pass the GPS antenna
wire through the wiring passageway and catch on the other
side. You can then just lift up the rear vent grate and mount
the GPS antenna in the proper location, and connect to the
wiring. I used this extra (purple) wire to pull the necessary
wires into the c-pillar and the back deck to mount the GPS
antenna.
The trunk area is easy. Just mount the trunk radio first,
then the DSP amp, the nav computer and the CD changer using
the new and old brackets and connect all of the components
up. I used a dremel tool to cut out the old trunk liner
instead of buying a new one. It took me a number of times to
get it perfect, but in the end it worked just fine. Remember,
cut smaller than needed as you can always cut more later after
you re-measure. It is always easier to cut a little more than
put it back on if you cut too much.
According to the BMW instructions the last step is to have
the car recoded at the dealer. First you will have to use the
MODIC to do a "retrofit" for nav, then you will need them to
code the DSP amp
BMW specifically
says that you must code the retrofit vehicle for everything to
work correctly. I have heard of some people who have not
coded their cars, but not sure if they work perfectly or not.
See BMW
info on coding for a retrofit vehicle
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