warning, this is a bit long winded.
today i got round to sorting the stereo in my ford c-max daily. what happened was it just lost all sound so i looked on ebay and they started 'secondhand' at £125 ffs! so i rang a local car stereo repairers and explained what i had and they agreed they're really stupid but yes it needed a new head unit. why is it stupid you ask? the head unit is touchscreen, does the radio, single cd, cd multichanger, satnav and the heater controls. the heater buttons are each side of the main screen and part of the unit. the guy said make sure you get the 4 digit pin code if you buy a secondhand unit. so i bit the bullet and spent my £125, the unit arrived and i plugged it in. for about 2 seconds the 'put your pin number in' screen appeared then a message came up saying vin number not recognised, contact you main dealer. i rang ford, told them what i needed, to get them to reprogram the new unit to recognise my ecu but oohhh no that's much too easy. it's programmed to the ecu at the factory on the assembly line and it can't be reset. £3800 +vat for a new one plus programming by them at over £100/hr.
soooo..... after staring at the 'new' unit as it sat by my keyboard here for a few weeks now i decided to take it apart, i mean how complicated can it be?
there are 4 units bolted to the back of the faceplate and weirdly the top 2 (which are bolted together also) and the bottom one are bluetooth to the faceplate, how mad is that! the bit i thought was the amp and would control sound was connected with 2 little plugs and 2 tiny ribbon connectors that aren't designed for fat fingers to remove let alone refit. but once back together i went out and plugged it back in to the car and bu66er! same vin number issue. now i knew it had to be the 2 bolted together bit i needed so i stripped and rebuilt it again and woohoo! it works.
what a palarva! and what a wasted afternoon!
neil.
