First post: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

[Bob M. Wiggins]

OK, I'll admit I'm not an X5 guy... yet. I'm a serious E39 junkie and I thought I'd just stop by to say THANK YOU for all the great information over here on my Mk IV system.

Let me tell you why I'm so excited. Here's a post I made over on the 'Fest E39 board...

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So the little missus and I decided that with two TiAg/Black E39 Sport 5'ers in the garage now, names would be a lot easier than numbers for conversation's sake. What better to "PUMP YOU UP" than Hans, the '03 540 M sport, and Franz, his older and not quite as strong little brother, the '01 525 sport.

Hans is still in the midst of a slight makeover and he's got a few pieces missing for a little longer, so I won't be able to post pics yet... but the first "intermal" mod is done.

On my ride back from picking up Hans in North Carolina, The Navtech disk that came stock with the system (MkIV with an old '02 digital map) got me lost.

Oddly enough, as I was trying to get back on the interstate, I found myself right in front of a nice BMW dealer, so I popped in for the new nav disc, only to find out that they retail for $200! OK, no. So this past weekend, I found and closed on the latest version, a sealed '07-2 on the 'bay for about half of what they retail for at the dealers. During the research to make sure I was getting the right part number for my system, I also discovered that the OS on my system was also original to the car and that there's been several revisions since. That pointed me toward the X5 boards (X5 World) where there is some serious info on updating and hacking the nav software (not the maps), including tutorials and links to software to change the systems.

SO, my first mods to Hans are...

- Updated to version 29.1 software.

- This enabled the awesome 3D view of the nav map.

- Created a custom horizon graphic of my home town's skyline, so the horizon of the 3D view now shows the actual skyline of my city.

- Revised some of the text prompts to make them a bit more realistic and intuitive.

- One of the coolest changes is "upgrading" the silly US woman female voice to a very respectable British bird. Same instructions and commands, but with much more class. I think Hans is falling for her.

- But the best mod ever... I changed my splash screen from the ugly plain font BMW letters in between the bars to a custom made graphic of my daughter, with her name and the Roundel in the lower corner. Every time I get in the car, I see her smiling face, like this.




Anyway, for you guys with nav, there is some really cool sh*t out there that allows full customization of your OS. TIMEKILL WARNING: I found myself killing about 5 hours last night and a few more today learning the tricks and hacking this stuff,but it's SO worth it!