The Arrival.....
The equipment arrived on time and in good condition thanks to Continental.
The Manual.....
The manual was fairly clear and easy to read. It has several languages available so it looks rather thick. Mine must have been an fairly early release because some of the printing was smudged and the pages were not all separated.
Installation.....
Thankfully, the installation of car stereo head units is a lot
simpler today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. DIN radios and
wiring harnesses make things a snap. The BMW factory unit just
slides right out once you open the flaps on either side and back
the screws out. I happened to have a tool that fit the screws,
but a small screwdriver would probably work. Once you slide the
radio out you need to disconnect the main antenna lead and the
diversity antenna lead. You will not be using the diversity
antenna lead again. There is a large connector on the back of the
radio. It appears that you need to pry the lock up with a
screwdriver and then pull off the plug from the radio.
Unfortunately the factory gorillas had broken mine, so it took a
little more work to get it off. Before you yank the plug off the
back of the radio, now would be a good time to make sure you have
your radio security code around. Once you remove the radio, you
will need the code if you decide to put the factory radio back in
at a later date. After I disconnected mine, I noticed the red
security light flashed for awhile afterwards which was kind of
wierd. I guess this is to keep you from having to renter the
security codes during a brief power loss. The radio should now be
free. Before you toss it, unscrew the grey rubber thingy on the
back, you will need it later. The next thing you need to do is
match the BMW wiring harness leads with the Blaupunkt wiring
harness leads and connect them. The best way to do this is with
solder if you are handy with a soldering iron. However wire nuts
carefully applied work quite well also. There are two wiring
blocks for the Toronto included. One has connections for
ignition, memory, etc and the other has connections for the
speakers. There will be an empty block left for future expansion
such as one of Blaus changers or the really neat Thummer
remote. I looked in the Blau manual and they did
show the wire color coding for power, illumination, memory, etc.
However, I noticed that there was no diagram for speaker
connections in the manual. The speaker wiring block had 4 pairs
of red/black and black wires. I thought for awhile that I was
going to have to put the radio on the test bench and power it up
to figure the speaker wire coding until I looked on the plastic
connector itself. Both of the plastic connectors have a label
etched into it as to what each wire sticking out of it is for.
This is not tremendously clear in the manual. With that out of
the way I simply matched each wire from the Blau connectors to
the BMW adapter wires, which are indicated on the back of the BMW
adapters' packaging. The only wire I was not sure about, was the
wire from the Blau marked Power Antenna and the BMW adapter had
one wire left marked Power Amp Turn on. I left these disconnected
for the time being. The next step was to install the sleeve in
the stock radios opening. This is done by sliding the
sleeve in and securing it in place by bending some of the tabs
outward until you get a secure fit. Connect the antenna wire to
the antenna jack on the back of the Blau (no antenna adapter
required). Connect the adapter into the wiring harness jack left
hanging out of the BMWs' dash, it will only go together one way.
Screw that grey thingy back on the new radio, since this helps
support the back of the radio. I was now ready for the smoke
test. I turned on the ignition and the radio lit up in a green
dot matrix saying "Power On". That was some very
positive feedback. However (Gulp), I could not get any sound !
This was definitely not good. I finally figured that the
BMWs internal power amps were not getting any juice. After
looking in the stock radios manual at the thoughtfully
provided wiring diagram, I discovered that pin 16 provided power
to the internal amps as well as the antenna amplifier. That also
happened to be the wire I did not connect on the BMW adapter that
was marked Amp turn on. Ok, so I needed to find a switched source
of +12V for the amps and antenna. I got out the trusty
multi-meter and checked the plug marked Power Ant. coming from
the Blau and sure enough it provided a constant +12 Volts when
the Blau was switched on. I connected the Power Ant wire from the
Blau to the Power Amp wire on the connector and now I had audio.
All that was left to do was slide the radio back in being careful
not to pinch any wires in the process until the unit locked into
place.