Radio expert wanted!

[Father Ted]

I've read this out of curiosity and have come to one conclusion: What an absolutely over-engineered system!

I plan to keep my car long enough that if I have a failure I would need to sort something out.
Got to say that my gut instinct is to rip out the head set and amp. Fit my own amp and touch screen double DIN head set and use the original speaker cabling.

Does anyone (Swiss?) know of a way to incorporate the steering wheel controls in with an aftermarket head?

[Floodys]

I would have gone that route father but first problem with mine was no aerial or speaker wires at the head unit end, I would think you could get it all out but as Swiss has said you loose lots of bits and pieces, I'm guessing one would have to run new speaker wires, power leads, aerial lead and new aerial of some sort?

[Floodys]

Originally Posted by SwissXC90

You appear to forget that it is a unidirectional fiber ring.

A tuner is always present, and it is not expected that the tuner will be missing.
A MD player and a CD player were optional, and are allowed to be missing from the ring.
Likewise the subwoofer, phone and nav are also optional, and can thus be bridged without any impact

But the ICM, the amplifier and the tuner form the minimum 3 components you must have present for normal operations.

After some dinner and a drink I'm thinking that if the sub is on the fibre loop, that's the closest thing to the radio tuner, I could try and plug the sub fibre to the radio tuner and it may get rid of the click as it did this afternoon when I connected the radio tuner to the MD fibre plug? Also thinking I could get a fibre extension cable to run from sub area up to radio tuner area? Still can't get my head round that if the MOST fibre is a loop, how and why when the tuner is on one part of the loop it clicks, on another part (MD plug) it dos not click! Lol

[Father Ted]

Originally Posted by Floodys

I would have gone that route father but first problem with mine was no aerial or speaker wires at the head unit end, I would think you could get it all out but as Swiss has said you loose lots of bits and pieces, I'm guessing one would have to run new speaker wires, power leads, aerial lead and new aerial of some sort?

Yeah.
I'd replace the amp and cable the head to the amp. I don't have rear headphone sockets, so the speaker wiring from the existing amp locations should be ok.
It would be the steering controls which would cause the difficulty.

[SwissXC90]

Originally Posted by Father Ted

Does anyone (Swiss?) know of a way to incorporate the steering wheel controls in with an aftermarket head?

The steering wheel controls are on the low speed CAN bus and send CAN bus commands.

To use them you need an adaptor from CAN bus to whatever head unit you want to fit

Yes, the entire system is cleverly engineered and never designed to be replaced.... for whatever that is worth to you.... but then ALL modern cars are like that these days. BMW, Mercedes, Audi: they all have highly integrated MOST systems and they all perform multiple functions such as phone, nav, audio, TV, parking beeper etc etc etc.

[Floodys]

Any thoughts on what I found today mr Swiss? I'd like to hear what you think re the loop, changing the tuner to the MD position and why that works there with no click and not at the back of the car where it should be? Cheers 👍

[SwissXC90]

Originally Posted by Floodys

Quick update for anyone who's interested, I'll probably get shot down for this but I'm 99% sure I've narrowed it down to the amp as Swiss had mentioned one of a couple of parts, the way I worked this out was interesting..... I had all the roof aerial, reliever, sat nav aerial etc etc apart and eliminated the big panel aerial as I disconnected it and still had the click, same for sat nav module, booster module. I then thought about what another posted had said re using another part of the loop ie put the radio receiver/tuner or whatever you want to call it in place of the MD or CD up front.... I managed to prize out the optic leads at rear of car where they would plug into the reciver and bridge them together via a piece of rubber washer hose so that the optic light could see each other! I then managed to pop out the optic leads at the MD player and place them in the radio reciver lump, gave it a 12v and a neg and fired it all up, sure enough no click...

But did the radio work?
Changing the physical location in the ring does not alter the logical channel the radio operates on.

Originally Posted by Floodys

if all these components are on the fibre loop and go back to the amp as one in/out fibre, how can it be a fault with the amp if everything is on the same loop?

The amplifier selects the source signal from the multiple logical signals on the bus. Think of it as an "old school" home audio system, where the amplifier has a big switch to select a different input. And maybe that one input is faulty.
So maybe the source selector is faulty.
Or maybe a fiber connection is dirty and you are getting bit errors on the fiber (highly unlikely)
Or maybe the tuner is faulty.

Replace the tuner or the amplifier to discover which is the issue.
Buy a 2nd hand one on eBay, the tuners are cheap.

[Floodys]

Yep, as per the last part of the post.... No click... I tried it in FM AM etc, various channels and started car up.... No click.....

[Floodys]

Happy to buy parts but you have said about the security system being in place on all components?....

[Floodys]

Originally Posted by SwissXC90

But did the radio work?




The amplifier selects the source signal from the multiple logical signals on the bus. Think of it as an "old school" home audio system, where the amplifier has a big switch to select a different input. And maybe that one input is faulty.
So maybe the source selector is faulty.
Or maybe a fiber connection is dirty and you are getting bit errors on the fiber (highly unlikely)
Or maybe the tuner is faulty.
.

I'm going to check the optical lead for dirt, damage etc,
I'm assuming the "big switch source selector" you mention is the one on the ICM? FM/AM CD etc? If so can't be that as its on FM and that's what it's on with click at rear and no click at MD position? Tuner can't be faulty either as it works at MD position.
Anyhow, my plan is to check the fibre wire, and then try the sub fibre plug to the tuner, if I get no click there my plan is to use that for tuner and either loop the other so,it's out of action and have no sub.