Karter16's Silbergrau E46 M3 Journal

[karter16]

Pleasant surprise this morning - look what arrived!






The box it arrived in was a bit beaten up, but when opening up you can see that the sharp corners are well-wrapped in bubble wrap to protect whatever else it comes into contact with 😂

Marin offers powder-coating as well, but after discussing with him I opted to get it unfinished and powder-coat locally, as a painted item requires much more packaging to protect it and pushes it into a more expensive shipping category.

I was a bit surprised when I first opened it to see that the brace doesn't have the extra cross member between the strut towers, but looking back on my comms with Marin when I actually placed the order I was not clear on the matter. Secondly, now that I've seen this in person I can say that that additional cross member would be entirely unnecessary anyway. The photos (especially the ones online) really do not give a good sense of just how solid this thing is. I'm glad that it turned out this way as not having that cross member means more available boot space for any odd-shaped objects.

I'm very happy with the build quality of this and just how solid it is in person. I'm looking forward to getting it powder coated and ordering the other bits and pieces I need to get this installed.

[0-60motorsports]

Excellent review on XTRONS! Will have to get one on the next sale.

[karter16]

I got a short period of time today to do a couple of things.

Firstly I was able to take the car for a bit of a longer drive on mixed suburban roads and motorway. Suffice to say I am very, very happy with the improvement that the solid coupler has brought. In saying that it's important to note that I'm coming from a 20 year old OE rubber coupler to a solid coupler. It's likely that much of the improvement would also be seen with a new OE coupler. Although it should be noted that Bry5on has tested new OE and solid back to back and also saw improvements beyond the OE item. Having read his description of the improvements, my experience is the same, but magnified further because my old unit was so worn out. Gone is almost all of the deadness around centre, previously when the wheel engaged the steering rack and started turning the wheels the first part of the rotation felt spongy (which will have been as the worn out rubber giubo loaded up). That is completely gone and steering now feels much more linear either side of centre.

Bry5on mentions improved granularity above, and I'm seeing exactly the same thing, it's as though the minimum amount of steering change you can make is smaller and more precise. Showing my age a bit here but it's the steering equivalent of going from SD to HD (or for the youngies it's the difference between cheap Netflix and expensive Netflix) everything is precise and feedback is better - when going from a worn coupler to solid/new the improvement is NOT subtle. Beyond maintenance/reliability work I try to focus the work I do on the car to get the best improvement to driving experience for the money I spend, and this change would easily be in my top 3 (alongside a brand-new steering wheel and the CSL bucket seats). When reading Br5yon's build thread I see that he also replaced the bushes on the lower steering column. I can't detect any undesired movement of the steering wheel laterally, but will swap them out anyway I think as they will no doubt be worn to some degree after 20 years.


The second thing that I got the chance to do is to take some vaguely decent photos of the Xtrons head unit to use in my 6 month review of the headunit.

Now that I've owned it for a decent period of time and had the chance to use it I think I'm at a point where I can make some overall observations of my experience with it. It's important to note up front that I've spent years reading all of the threads of people struggling and having issues with their Chinese-sourced headunits, and for a long time I had no intention of owning one, so when I eventually decided to give the Xtrons a go, it was not with the highest of expectations. Keep this in mind as you read my comments as my view of the unit may be affected by my initial low optimism. Secondly note that I'm very familiar with technology/computers/embedded systems/etc. so I'm very comfortable digging round in the guts of OSs and trying things out. That said I haven't had to do anything with this unit beyond some adjustment of some factory settings.


Why an Xtrons?
I was planning for a long time to install a head unit from a tier-one manufacturer of aftermarket headunits. Unfortunately they all suck (in my opinion) in particular going with such a unit I would obviously be giving up all pretence of OE looks. I was okay with giving up the OE look in exchange for reliability. Unfortunately the more I read the more it became apparent that I wasn't going to get the reliability I was after. I therefore eventually decided that I would have a go with a Chinese unit, and if it wasn't suitable, I'd then try a tier-one headunit.

So why Xtrons over Dynavin, Avin, etc?

Avin was a no-go, I've seen far too many complaints about them. Dynavin's new units have the Dynavin logo on them, have chunky buttons, and maintain the buttons on both sides layout of the original unit. In my opinion all 3 of these things were negatives. I certainly didn't want to end up with a tablet stuck to the dash, but I also felt that the layout of the Dynavin was unnecessarily dated, especially given the unit would spend most of its time in CarPlay. I was then drawn to Xtrons in particular because Obioban has one and had talked about it positively.

What unit?
I ended up choosing the IX8246BHL, because it was the highest-spec'd unit in that form factor that was available. Is that overkill for essentially running CarPlay? Yes probably, but while I have regretted having technology spec'd too low, I have never regretted having it spec'd too high, and for the comparatively small cost difference it was a no-brainer for me.

As an aside some of Xtron's other units for the E46 are marketed as having "Automotive quality components". I've seem some discussion in the past about what the difference is. I reached out to Xtrons about this and was advised that the marketing was used on older units where that was a new addition, however for newer models like the IX series that marketing was dropped, as all their units now have "Automotive quality components".

Purchasing and Shipping
I ordered the unit on a Sunday afternoon from Xtron's website, and it was shipped from Singapore, and arrived at my house in Auckland, New Zealand 3 days later. Those of you who do not live in New Zealand probably won't appreciate how impressive this is. In short purchasing and shipping was super easy - I thought I'd messed something up with the order and reached out to Xtrons support, they got back to me and answered my query within hours.

Installation
The headunit comes with a lot of wiring looms and accessories, and when you open the box I can see it easily seeming a bit overwhelming, however the documentation is good enough to understand what needs to be done, and in my case (6 CD changer, no Nav) was as simple as using the ISO connector to hook into the car wiring, plus plugging in a few accessories like the CAN interface, GPS, Antenna, etc. I opted to not wire any USB connectors, 4G, etc. as I have no use for them. Given I didn't already have nav I had to relocate the HVAC controls, etc. which is all fairly straightforward as well. I had the unit in and everything done in a couple of hours (of which at least 20% was getting the centre vents out). The unit fired right up and everything was good. I needed to do a couple of minor settings changes (set the unit to RHD as it's LHD by default, but all straightforward.

Fitment/Build Quality
I have to say seeing the unit installed in my car it looks like it fits the interior better than I was expecting it would. I'm very glad I went for the wide-screen format with the buttons underneath, I think it makes the best use of the available space and is a great balance of modernity while still fitting in to the dash (as best as a touch screen is going to in an older car like the E46). The display is excellent and the touchscreen is accurate and reliable, no missed taps or the like. It is a shame that, like all these units, the screen is glossy rather than matte, particularly when displaying darker colours it does suffer from light reflection. I might give a quality matte overlay (like 3M produce) a go at some point to see if it's an improvement). The unit dimensions are good (with one exception) and it appears to match the crease in the dash well.






The buttons are okay, at first glance they match the rest of the E46 buttons but there's a couple of things that aren't quite right. Firstly the typeface is not correct :-( It would have been really great to see Xtrons matching this properly. Secondly the white parts of the buttons which illuminate seem to have a slight translucency to them compared to the genuine buttons, which gives them a slightly different look especially under brighter light. These things aside the buttons feel pretty good, although if you press hard on the outer buttons you can see the adjustment knobs flex slightly, presumably the board the buttons and knobs are attached to isn't supported as well as it could be. The centre button is in fact not a button, but a is a removable cover for the micro SD card. This is a pretty good solution, but of course means that the centre button doesn't illuminate, again a slight annoyance.

The control knobs actually fit the interior pretty well. The chrome seems off in isolation, but particularly in my SMG it helps tie everything together, matching the chrome on the lighter cover and the SMG shifter/ring. I'm counting this as a win. The knobs themselves aren't anything to write home about (not compared to the items on the OE stereo), but they're not awful, and they work well enough.

Other things to note. The headunit body is black plastic, that in texture matches well. In colour, if you look closely (it's more apparent in the photos than in real life) the black has a different base to the rest of the car. The Xtrons black is warmer/yellower than the OE black (which is cooler/more cyan). In practice this isn't really noticeable, but worth calling out to be aware of.

I mentioned above that the unit is well dimensioned and fits well. This is true in all regards with one exception. The clip receptacle for the dash trim that runs above the radio is simply not right. I had to significantly modify this downwards in order to fit the trim correctly without it being pushed up. Photo below shows how much it's off by.






Performance
The headunit is blindingly fast. Navigating the OS/apps is seamless, every transition is smooth, I have zero complaints about performance.

CarPlay
CarPlay support was the key reason for me making this upgrade, if it didn't work reliably then the unit would be a no-go for me. First-time I turned the unit on and connected my phone to bluetooth CarPlay (actually the ZLink app) fired up. It's so satisfying to get into the car with your phone in your pocket, and by the time you're reversing out of the garage CarPlay has fired up and you're listening to your music.

And how has the reliability been? To begin with, from time to time (every couple of weeks) I'd encounter an issue where I'd get into the car and CarPlay simply wouldn't connect. The headunit would show my phone was connected, and my phone would show that it was connected to the headunit, but no dice. Seems like not a very good start, however at the same time I was having trouble with my phone connecting to the wired CarPlay in our MG ZS EV (exactly the same symptoms). Secondly the way to resolve the issue was to reboot my phone (nothing needed to be done on the headunit side in either car). These two things made me suspect the issue lay with iOS/my phone, and indeed this was subsequently proven true when an iOS update (can't remember what version) was released in March, and the occasional issue simultaneously stopped happening with both vehicles.

Since then CarPlay has been perfect - it works exactly as I hoped it would.





Audio Quality
I will caution my comments here by saying I am in no way an audiophile.
Audio quality, to be honest I cannot tell any particular difference between the Xtrons and the OE radio the sound that the Xtrons produces is entirely acceptable to me and I have no complaints. Noise is very low and is not noticeable. There is an issue with some IX units whereby the difference between volume level 4 and volume level 5 is larger than it should be. Xtrons are supposedly working on a fix for this, but it hasn't bothered me as this is outside of my normal range of use anyway, so isn't affecting me. I'll patch the unit when the patch is available and report back on this.

In one of my earlier posts I describe how I used HouseCurve and REW to generate DSP settings for the built-in DSP in the Xtrons unit. This resulted in a significant (as in even I could tell the improvement) improvement and I'm very pleased I went to the trouble of doing this (this isn't about the headunit so much as tuning it to the car's speakers and soundstage.



Other changes I've made
I've made some other various changes that are worth noting.

1: I loaded a custom boot logo to the unit. This boot logo is a high-res reproduction of the original boot logo on the E46 nav. I feel it's a nice additional touch to make the unit feel more OE. It's worth noting that others report seeing a "Powered by Android" logo as well. I only ever see this if I do a hard reboot of the unit, I never ever see this in day to day use. I don't know why, or what setting I might/might not have that impacts this, but worth calling out.



2: I've replaced the Xtrons launcher with iDrive Launcher which is a fantastic, well put together, piece of software which further does wonders to make the unit feel like it fits in the E46 interior.



Overall Thoughts
What are my overall thoughts on this headunit? I'm very happy I bought it! It has turned out to be significantly better than I was anticipating, and in particular has been reliable, which is absolutely key for me. Knowing what I now know I think that this unit provides the best combination of newer technology in a form factor that matches the E46 dash as well as it can. The package that Xtrons have put together works well, and some fairly simple customisations have this unit at a point where I doubt there is a better (for me) option out there.

There is no way prior to owning this unit that I would have ever recommended someone buy one of these units, now that I've owned one I would happily recommend people consider it (with all the caveats I've listed above). I look forward to updating on my ownership next year - hopefully it has continued to be a pleasant ownership experience.

I don't think I've missed anything from this review, but if I have I'll add it here.

[karter16]

Did you notice any change to the granularity of steering feel? When I went to a double u-joint solid shaft on my LHD car I got additional ‘micro’ feedback. I replaced a brand new guibo and even mine was a big difference!

To be honest I only got to take it for a very quick test after I finished (before shipping wife off to a hotel for the weekend to relax) so I haven't driven it enough to fully appreciate the improvement yet. I'm hoping to take it for a longer drive later today and will report back after I have. If I do notice the same as you describe I'll be very pleased indeed!

[Bry5on]

Did you notice any change to the granularity of steering feel? When I went to a double u-joint solid shaft on my LHD car I got additional ‘micro’ feedback. I replaced a brand new guibo and even mine was a big difference!

[karter16]

Quick project today to replace the rubber steering giubo with a solid coupler from CMP. In the last little while I've had noticeable deadness around centre. The car tracks fine on the road, but small steering inputs are annoying as you have to steer through the deadness before you can make adjustments. I thought it was likely this was the giubo, but can never tell until you try it.

Note: For those of you with LHD please note that you cannot use this item in your LHD car. LHD cars rely on the rubber giubo to account for the slight off-axis play needed in the LHD column. The RHD coupler is different and includes a universal joint, so a solid coupler like this is just fine for RHD, but a no-go for LHD. I recently saw a very sad thread on Facebook where someone asked for peoples' experience with the CMP solid coupler and it was roundly rubbished by a number of people who had used it on their LHD car. Shame for CMP as they make it clear it is an RHD part and sucks to see uninformed customers rubbish a product when they're the ones who have used it incorrectly.

Anyhow - this was a pretty quick project. I'd painted the coupler with matte black enamel as I'm not keen on the flashy purple for my build. The removal of the coupler is trivial, dismantling it and rebuilding is likewise simple so long as you take your time and make sure you prepare the mating surfaces well. All up the project took me about 3 hours to do.



From reading about others experiences of before and after with a solid coupler I was expecting a mild improvement and no additional NVH.

Mine must have been very worn as the difference between before and after was not mild. I could tell as soon as I started manoeuvring the car in the driveway. The rubber was not broken or degraded in any way, but was soft, so the solid coupler has made a massive difference. Steering play is gone and the steering feels more direct and is less spongy. As expected I don't get any unpleasant NVH - just more precise steering control.

$100 well spent.

[karter16]

I almost exclusively use the Xtrons headunit for CarPlay, however on the occasions that I have a need to do something else I find the default Xtrons launcher to be a pretty jarring experience. I've been having a bit of a look around at options, and have had a play around with iDrive Launcher (https://idrive.ibus-app.de/index_en.html). I know that NBT iDrive didn't come on the E46, however it certainly feels a lot less flashy and feels like it fits much better in the E46 than the standard Xtrons launcher. I think it's an acceptable compromise, given I've already compromised by putting newer technology in the E46 anyway.

I have to say I'm super-impressed with the software. It's very nicely built, fast, reliable, configurable. It's a pretty nice experience to get in the car, turn it on and see the BMW boot logo, then the iDrive launcher home menu, then have CarPlay auto-connect.

I've got more work to do to sort out the menus (I don't need the Multimedia, Navigation or ConnectedDrive items for example) but will get that sorted once I've got everything figured out and optimised.

I'm also working on mapping the second (right hand) control knob on the Xtrons unit to the navigation controls for the launcher, if I can get this figured out it means the interface can be controlled with the control knob/SWCs which would be a nice added touch.

Here's a few average iPhone photos - doesn't really do justice to the super-smooth animations/transitions, but you get the idea.








Interestingly these photos also show that I haven't quite got the RGB/luminosity of the head unit illuminated buttons right. I 100% can't tell in person, but the photos clearly show it up - will have a play to get it closer.

[karter16]

It's been a busy few months at work, but I've done a few tiny bits and pieces here and there - quick summary below:

Replaced the broken clamp on the negative battery cable which broke - replacement thanks to a member on the NZ forum.




I also noticed that when I'd installed the new gas struts on the boot, I'd installed them upside down 🤦♂️ so quickly sorted that:




Also realised I didn't update on adjusting the xtrons headunit to fit the dash trim properly. It turned out it needed to be adjusted a lot - more than could be achieved with a file - photo shows how far out it is:




Next up will be getting a chance to get some decent photos of the xtrons and then will write up my thoughts on it now that I've owned it for 6 months or so.

Also waiting for the Yurkan 6 point brace to arrive, it's currently somewhere between Germany and here.

[robgill]

Another little side project I've been working on is this:

As time goes on my collection of spare/new parts continues to increase to the point that it's challenging to keep track in a spreadsheet of what I've purchased/fitted/quantities remaining, etc. I also want to be able to more easily plan out future projects and map that back to parts I have/need to get.

To this end I've setup an inventree instance and loaded into it the complete list of part numbers for my specific VIN. Now that I've got this base setup I can go through my parts shelves, load in the quantities etc. and then I have an easy view of what I've got without having to dig through boxes. When I fit parts I can decrease the stock on hand, etc. I can also make use of some of inventree's other features to build BOMs for projects, track what parts I need to order, etc.

Is this overkill? absolutely, 100%. But it will make things a bit easier for me, plus it's cool to have a complete list of part numbers for reference.

My method is searching email for the part # to see if I already ordered it. Then hunting around my shop for the part I already ordered 😂.

[karter16]

You’re the man, thanks.

Also that’s rad that you’ve got your own inventory tool! Now I’m curious how you got a file that contains your car’s full bill of materials..

I was reading something last night that suggested there's a way of enabling wifi ADB via terminal without root, so I might give that a go when I get a chance.

There's no magic way I got the file unfortunately - it was old-school scrapey scrape (which I left running overnight at a slow pace to not annoy anyone too much).

[Bry5on]

I had a further look into this this evening. Building out the boot animation is easy - here is one attached for 1280x480 screen res: [ATTACH]n263171[/ATTACH]

I installed ADB and enabled developer tools on the Xtrons unit. Unfortunately it seems that the unit doesn't have an option to use wireless debugging. USB is indeed an option, however I don't have any USB headers installed at present, so any further work on this will need to wait until a future point in time.

If anyone else wants to give it a go you're welcome to use the attached file. If you do then let me know how you get on!

You’re the man, thanks.

Also that’s rad that you’ve got your own inventory tool! Now I’m curious how you got a file that contains your car’s full bill of materials..

[karter16]

Another little side project I've been working on is this:



As time goes on my collection of spare/new parts continues to increase to the point that it's challenging to keep track in a spreadsheet of what I've purchased/fitted/quantities remaining, etc. I also want to be able to more easily plan out future projects and map that back to parts I have/need to get.

To this end I've setup an inventree instance and loaded into it the complete list of part numbers for my specific VIN. Now that I've got this base setup I can go through my parts shelves, load in the quantities etc. and then I have an easy view of what I've got without having to dig through boxes. When I fit parts I can decrease the stock on hand, etc. I can also make use of some of inventree's other features to build BOMs for projects, track what parts I need to order, etc.

Is this overkill? absolutely, 100%. But it will make things a bit easier for me, plus it's cool to have a complete list of part numbers for reference.

[karter16]

Jumping back to this but taking it to 10/10.

There’s a boot animation that happens after the splash screen that says “powered by android” and it also appears to be customizable. It seems like the boot animation is fundamentally just PNG files zipped up. Did you consider also replacing the boot animation so it stays consistent with the stock boot up?

background on compiling a custom boot animation: https://emteria.com/blog/custom-boot...id?hs_amp=true

I’ll note that you made the right call with the Xtrons. It’s leaps and bounds ahead of the Avin unit that crapped out on me after two years. I should have switched earlier.

I had a further look into this this evening. Building out the boot animation is easy - here is one attached for 1280x480 screen res: bootanimation.zip
I installed ADB and enabled developer tools on the Xtrons unit. Unfortunately it seems that the unit doesn't have an option to use wireless debugging. USB is indeed an option, however I don't have any USB headers installed at present, so any further work on this will need to wait until a future point in time.

If anyone else wants to give it a go you're welcome to use the attached file. If you do then let me know how you get on!

[karter16]

Checked today and in fact there doesn't appear to be an option to turn off the boot animation. So I still have no idea why I don't see the animation under normal conditions. I confirmed this morning (driving car for first time in several days) that when I turn on/start the car the unit screen turns on, immediately showing the custom boot screen (BMW logo) from there as soon as the logo stops being displayed I'm straight into the home screen of the head unit...

[karter16]

Actually - thinking about this further - I think there's an option to turn off the boot animation that appears after the splash screen (it just shows the splash screen for longer instead) which would explain why I don't see it. Let me double check tomorrow when I'm in the car.