Gents,
For a long time, I wanted remove the dodgy Ericson car-kit that the previous owner had installed in the early years of the GSM era. I never liked the way it was installed due the not reverseble damage to the full leather center console in satin-silver (pictures available, but are archived on anothre media then the hard drive of not notebook.
Due to the fact that I had to install another car-kit for the phone function, I never removed it. In recent years, radio's became available with a bluetooth function, but I wanted something similar in appearance to my Blaupunkt San Remo RD127 Radio CD player since that matches the interior almost perfectly. Only the simple yellow backlight didn't match the color of the bulbs in the instrument cluster. I also don't like the fancy appearance and design of the Japanese car-audio manufacturers and I didn't want a large TV display. Then there is only one alternative.
Becker makes some interesting radio units with a simple timeless design that matches the interior of our E34's perfectly. I had some wishes. A new radio must have (Navtec) navigation with TMC and a bluetooth function for a mobile phone.
After some deliberation I wanted the Cascade Pro 7941, but that one is not available at the moment, so for the time being I decided to settle with the Cascade 7944 for now since I want to have navigation and bluetooth before the start of the next Alps tour in September. The 7944 is almost equal, but has to do without the GSM module and a secondary (SD/MMC) socket next to the primary Compact Flash socket for the navigation. I made the arrangement that I can exchange the 7944 for the 7941 at a later date when it becomes available.
The antenna for the GPS has a perfect place underneath the ventilation roster on the dashboard. The installation of the wiring is not difficult, but I found out that although my car was build on 28 March 1990, it was installed withy the pre 9/1989 radio preparation wiring that doesn't contain the 17-pins BMW radio connector. The previous owner did install some wiring with ISO connectors but fortunatelly not in an intrusive way.
I ordered the required interface cables from BMW but these are apparentaly low in demand and thus have an unknown delivery time. Fortunatelly the previous owner patched some ISO connectors in a not intrusive way so I could reuse them to patch new full wired ISO connectors. These will later be removed and soldered correctly onto the BMW interface cables that I will modify proffesionally when they arrive. A detailed picture of the damaged satin silver center console (not reversable unless replaced)
The final installation:
The orange setting of the Cascades excellent OLED display matches the emmited orange of the bulbs within the instrument cluster very close.
With the Cascade and in the next few weeks hopefully the Cascade Pro I will have navigation with TMC that will be helpfull on cross continental trips to avoid the growing (as well as in length and in numbers) traffic jams and a bluetooth module for my mobile phone. This will allow me to replace or repair the center console in the next few months.
Linear Mode
