David.
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Denison ice>Link
I bought it from http://www.ihavetohaveit.com - currently the only reseller in the UK. The ice>Link itself was £80. I also purchased a Brodit iPOD cradle from them which was £15. Carriage was free/included.
Initial observations of the kit was that it wasn’t very much for the money but then you have to consider the research and development that went into it. The supplier originally only sent the ice>Link portion itself which connects to a Sony stereo. They subsequently sent a Connect2 adaptor that allows a Sony multichanger to be connected to the Z4. So the ice>Link acts as the ‘multihanger’ through the Connects2 interface.
I haven’t seen Connects2 kit before, only Soundlinx – it all seemed fine, although one of the pins did come out of a connector into the interface box during installation but was simply plugged back in again. The Connects2 kit has the proper connections to be placed in series between the original wiring loom head unit connector and the head unit itself.
The complete kit was a bit ‘messy’ – it would have been nice to have one black box that connects to the head unit with appropriate wires for the iPOD but I presume that making an ice>Link for Sony and then providing a Connects2 interface for the particular car is a cheaper way of achieving the same objective.
Bear in mind that the supplied kit does not come with a power/charge lead for the iPOD, it just has a firewire port that you can plug the standard iPOD cable into. To achieve this I had to order one of these cables so that I could use the original at home to charge/sync with the PC. The extra cable came from the Apple Store and was £20 inc delivery.
Installation
To install the interface you need to connect the Connect2 interface to the back of the Head Unit and the ice>Link wires to the iPOD
Step 1 – Removing the vents
To remove the head unit, you need to remove the central air vent. There is a knack to this which took some time to get and was probably the trickiest part of the install! Please be careful – the aluminium dashboard dents easily, as does the plastic on the head unit! The vents scratch easily as does the black surround behind the vent!
There are two clips holding the vent in place, as can be seen from the first photo below, you need to free these to pull the vent out.
The best way of doing this is to slide a knife in from the top corner above the vent and ease it across to pull the clip down. You can see from the second image that there is a ‘gap’ in the surround behind the vent where you should slide the knife. Do this on both sides to free the clips so that you can then pull the vent out.
Step 2 – Removing the head unit
The head unit is held in with two Philips screw in each top corner (as can be seen in the previous image). Once you unscrew these, the whole unit pulls straight out.
Step 3 – Connecting the Connects2 interface
The interface is connected between the wiring loom plug and the head unit. Firstly, unclip the ‘arm’ from the bottom of the plug and pull upwards, this frees the plug from the head unit.
The plug can be seen below, you are looking the bottom of the plug nearest you. There are two separate plugs that are ‘clicked’ into the main one, the white one on the left is for the multichanger lead that feeds to the storage compartment between the seats for the OEM changer, the black one on the right is for, I presume, the multifunction steering wheel.
You need to unclip both these plugs from the main plug.
You then need to clip the small black plug into the new Connects2 plug that is going into the back of the head unit – this is tricky because there isn’t much spare wire.
The white plug you unclicked is ignored and the identical white plug from the Connect2 interface is clicked into the Connects2 plug going into the head unit!
Plug the new Connect2 plug into the back of the head unit and the other end of the Connects2 loom into the original car wiring loom. The image below shows the Connects2 loom plugged into the car loom ready to be plugged into the back of the head unit.
If this all seems confusing, it’s not and there are diagrams with the Connect2 interface if you get stuck.
Step 4 – Replacing the head unit
At this stage you should replace the head unit so that you can feed the wires through the dashboard. I decided to install the iPOD by the gear stick so needed to feed the wires down behind the Aircon panel, under the cigarette lighter and out through the gearstick surround. When feeding the wires from behind the head unit, be careful to feed them through the correct opening and make sure nothing gets pulled or trapped. The head unit needs a little bit of persuasion to sit correctly and never actually ‘clicks’ into place.
Step 5 – Feeding the ice>Link wires
Again, this depends where you are putting the iPOD. In my case I needed to get them to the gear lever surround. The panel underneath the aircon controls clips out fairly easily and allows you to get more access behind the dashboard.
The gearlever boot simply pulls off the surround and in turn the surround unclips with the front end (i.e. towards the front of the car) coming out
first.
To feed the wires out from behind the gear level surround I used a Dremel to make a small indent in the bottom edge to prevent the surround trapping the wires.
Step 6 – Fitting the iPOD Cradle
No images of ‘in progress’ here but I used a combination of the Brodit cradle and a modified Nokia car kit adjustable mount. This was then fixed to the trim with double sided tape. It’s holding at the moment but may need something more in the future.
Step 7 – Testing/Finishing
Plug the white Apple lead (if you use the charging cable) into the bottom port of the iPOD and the ice>link jack plug/remote connector into the top.
As soon as you plug the iPOD in, it will start charging with the ignition and HU off.
When you turn the stereo on, you should be able to change the mode to multichanger (the display will say CD 01-01). The iPOD should turn on and start playing. Pressing FF/RW on the HU or steering wheel should go forward and back in the tracks. Pressing the mode button again (to select single CD) will turn the iPOD off.
If everything is fine, replace all the panels in the reverse order of removal
Observations
At first I thought why have I wasted my money? I wasn’t blown away with the quality of the kit, I had struggled to remove the vents(!!) and wasn’t massively impressed with the operation. Having played with it more I am happy!
I thought that the 1 – 6 buttons on the HU selected one of the first six playlists on the iPOD – it doesn’t. I must have made that up but I know Denison’s own MP3/hard drive/multichanger does do that!
Also, whenever you select the multichanger mode, the volume on the iPOD goes up to maximum, which was making all my songs distort. I have since turned on ‘Sound Select’ on the iPOD, which keeps all the songs at the same volume level. This seems to resolve the distortion issue but needs more investigation.
The display on the HU means nothing when it is in multichanger mode so you just ignore it! In fact I have the clock displaying anyway.
The iPOD is always charging even when the ignition is off so beware of this, especially if you leave it plugged in the car in your garage (or somewhere where you don’t mind leaving the iPOD in the car).
The real bonus of this system over simply using the BMW aux interface is the integration with the standard stereo, whilst this doesn’t do the playlist selection that I thought it did, being able to flick through tracks with the HU or MFSW is handy. More useful though is the iPOD pausing/switching off when you change the mode button and turning on/playing when you select multichanger mode. If you use the aux input you have to do all of this manually on the iPOD itself.
So, if I could reverse time would I buy one knowing what I know now? Well in total it has cost £115 (I saved a bit of money by having part of the mounting already). If I didn’t have an iPOD then I would maybe consider an alternative hard drive system like Denison’s – the disadvantage of this is having to mount a display somewhere. Having said this you have to mount the iPOD somewhere but could hide it – the real advantage is you see all the track information on the iPOD display that you don’t if you have a regular multiplayer. So I have an IPOD and want to use it in the car, do I choose the BMW Aux input (approx £40) or the ice>Link? I would choose the ice>Link – simply for the automatic switching on/off and the power provision (with the Aux input you would need to use a cigarette socket power lead or similar). Of course there are the ‘radio’ options but I didn’t consider these due to the quality issues.
