an update on my situation: I left the ipod in the car for the past week, it was working just fine for 3 days, then yesterday morning, after dropping off my kids at school (and everything was working on the way to school), about 30 sec into the drive, not touching anything on the radio ... I lost control of the icelinnk UI entirely and the display showed AUX1. after parking my car at work I hard reset the ipod and plugged it back in ... going home everything was working again (icelink UI) but after forwarding some tracks it happened again. I switched to the CD player, turned the radio off for ~ 30 sec, then switched to the ipod and it was working again. and all day today I had no issues ...

somethiing is wrong since I'm not the only one with problems. Dension support seems to be non-existent, they don't acknowledge nor return my emails (others seem to have the same experience). My expectations were different for this device, but I think I will live with it, however, I would not recommend this device based on the experience so far (icelink UI not working but audio quality is wonderful).
Tom G - you are doing a great job on this board here and all your advice and help is very much appreciated, I think I can make that statement on behalf of everyone here.