2003 E46 BMW 3 Series Ci Coupe UK Install Complete - custom dash/RR skin - many pics!

**lloydy** · 02-22-2006, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by xtremak

If your car has the builtin antenna in the rear with the defrosting strips, you will need to power up the antenna amp, this is usually done by the headunit by sending an ON signal to the antenna amp. I cannot recall the color of the wire but if you need details let me know and I will post them here...

Will be testing out the skin as soon as i get off from work, will keep you posted on that...

Ahh - this is very interesting news. I do have the builtin antenna you're referring to. Thank you very much for that info. Yes I believe it's the blue wire on the wiring harness (Scosche) I have. If I get this working it would be fantastic! I just need to link the ACC wire to the blue antenna power wire and it should work. More details on this would be great - Thank you.

LLOYDY

**3onDubs** · 02-22-2006, 05:50 PM

Originally Posted by lloydy

It's my own skin. If you look up a few posts from this reply you can see the download link for it.

LLOYDY

**xtremak** · 02-22-2006, 07:34 PM

The antenna is built into the defrosting strips in the rear glass, with cars with OEM Nav it is in the shark-fin antenna. Yeah you just have to connect +12V to the wire as far as I can recall its the blue wire, it turns on both the amp in the trunk and the antenna amp. Also, just checked out the skin in my car, looks amazing the only thing I am going to change is the font size of the playlist on a 7" screen its kinda hard to read. I will play around with it more and will let ya know if I can think of anything else...

Edit::
Confirmed its the blue wire just connect it to the ACC line

**lloydy** · 02-23-2006, 07:03 AM

Caution: There is a small bug with RoadRunner that Guino has confirmed that causes RR to close with my skin. If you try to use the volume up and volume down buttons in the video BROWSER (not player) RR will close down. Guino has said this will be fixed in the next release of RR.

Link to thread discussin this: Volume Control in RR Video BROWSER Causing RR to Crash and Close

LLOYDY

**xtremak** · 02-23-2006, 11:19 AM

Would it be possible for you to add the font you are using for the XP appearance to the skin so that we could use it to modify the XP appearance to match yours...

**nkotch** · 02-23-2006, 11:30 AM

Downloaded and used your skin in the car the other day and very impressed. Very responsive and usable. The ONLY thing so far is sometimes that orange text (for current song playing and in playlist) may be a little too small on my 7" screen. More so on the scrolling current song it can be a little hard to read but I may play with changing font size and seeing if that helps.

Other than that everything I use on it works fine, haven't done much with the video player so I'll have to mess around with that.

**lloydy** · 02-23-2006, 12:05 PM

No problems to add the font. I will do this in the next release (which will be soon).

I have just been looking into this font issue. For some reason on my carPC all the fonts are larger. But on my desktop PC they are much smaller. This smaller size is what all you have been experiencing. It's not meant to be that small. If you look at my screenshots you will notice how my font is not that small. The date and time, the playlist, everything should be larger. It is something to do with Windows altering the font size somewhere along the line. I have problems with message boxes, dialogue boxes etc in Windows all having too large of font. I will fix this soon and get the new version out ASAP.

LLOYDY

**lloydy** · 02-23-2006, 01:05 PM

I have now released the skin officially in beta. The new version has the extra fonts requested and the font sizes have been fixed.

Link: http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=755056

LLOYDY

**Marchello** · 03-24-2006, 04:31 AM

lloydy
Impressive work!!!
Could you please give me an update on the antenna situation. I am doing my carputer as well, 2001 330ci with HK amp. I am using WinTV which comes with a thin copper split antenna (sorry I dont know what you call it)

. I am not getting a decsend reception. So how did you tap into the oem antenna for both FM and TV? where is the connection and how did you power it?

Would it be possible to tab into the coax FM antenna cable that used to connect to the back of the oem HU? Is there any adapter for it to connect to the WinTV antenna jack?

Thanks in advance.

**Dylan Jones** · 03-24-2006, 08:06 AM

May i just say. Thats a lovley install. Apart from maybe the routing of the cables to the boot.

Can i Suggest the whining your getting from the speakers is due to the power and phono leads being so close together. What ive done in the past with installs like that is build a false floor and cover it in carpet. Then all the cables are hiden underneath. Ive also used the cubby holes on the sides of the boot to hide stuff.

Grond loop isolators wont help you in this situation. Like you suggested. Some cable ties would make it better.

May I just say! That is a very nice install and skin. Shame i dont know much about the software side of things. Would love an Audi one.

Well done mate.