z4 sat nav buggered

amwales · Joined: 20 Jul 2009 Posts: 9

Hi People

This morning my Sat Nav decided to stop working. It used to display a picture of the plent earth in the top right with a little image of a satellite on it ( green if my memory serves correctly ). This morning the little satellite was missing and the Sat Nav seemed to have no idea where it was going. I guess for some reason its lost the satellites. I drove the car for about 40mins and again on the way home the same problem. So any ideas on how I can get it to work?

I just bought the car privately about 2 months ago so any problems I'm finding are mine and I've been slowly finding them Sad

I've popped out the DVD and it's not a factory original, but I can't see how that would cause this problem.

Is there a way of resetting the Sat Nav?

Thanks

MarkR · Joined: 01 Dec 2003 Posts: 58 Location: Dunstable

I have this problem right now, and also had it three years ago. Had it sorted under warrenty three years ago, but it took about five days. Still with extended warenty so will give it to BMW again. you are right the 'Arial' which gets the signals from the sats isn't picking up a signal. mine does every 100 miles work for ten minutes so puts me back into position, then the position is kept by the cars compass and wheel roration.

estocks · Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 3015

First, do a battery off reset, taking car to let the nav shut down (red light goes off) if it is a MK3. If you don't the memory could be irrepairably corrupted during a flash write (red light flashing).

Next, if that does not solve your problem, enter the service mode, usually done by holding down a button such as menu. There is will give you a detail of all the satellites in view. If zero, you may have a fault in the cabling or the GPS antenna.

If you are any good with computers, use my guide to INPA to interrogate the nav and find out what is wrong.

amwales · Joined: 20 Jul 2009 Posts: 9

This morning it picked up some satellites for a few minutes and lost them again Sad

After doing some research looks like there it may be possible to reset the satnav by disconnecting the battery for 15mins. What bad things might happen if I do this?

Ive located some GPS antennas on ebay but am wondering how difficult they would be to fit, has any here had any experience of doing this and know the actual location of the factory fitted GPS antenna?

It's all out of warranty on an 04 plate so I won't get any joy out of BMW, just a hefty bill.

estocks · Joined: 04 Oct 2005 Posts: 3015

Surely you need to find out what's wrong instead of buying and hoping? But if you want to do that then get the GPS antenna and a MK4 DVD nav drive, and you may need to code your VIN into it with INPA or a dealer visit.

PVR

No coding required, ever. I have retrofitted the satnav system twice now and it is all plug and play.

Depending on the year of your car, the aerial is either behind the instrument cluster or up at the rear view mirror.

The aerial runs through the centre console to the MKIV unit. Point to note is that ALL Z4s have a MKIV unit, MKIII was not available.

A new aerial is a tenner, so is a fairly cheap method of checking whether that is at fault. I tested the satnav like that and it worked no matter where I stuck the aerial, so in the end I put it next to the radio on the metal bracket behind the dash (magnetic).

First do the reset of 15 minutes battery off. No risk involved, you will just lose your OBC settings and time.