Received my replacement today. Besides a bad tint job, a damaged A/c vent, and a slightly uncentered steering wheel, here are some things I noticed.

1) Both the nav screen and dash count down the number of feet to the next street turn. It does not always pick the most direct route. It recalculates routes after a missed turn quickly. In addition to restaurants, you may set as destinations hotels, railroad stations, schools, amusement parks, theaters, monuments, libraries, atm's and banks. It also lists the address and phone numbers. I like the voice but it sounds a bit choppy. I like the fact that it gives the directions ahead of time (eg. "make a slight left and then immediate right" "be prepared to make a right" "it is one half mile till your destination"). You can control the loudness, and the bass and treble of the nav voice. You can even have the route directions listed and take a detour from certain segments of the route.

2) The aux works beautifully with my creative nomad mp3 player but it is a bit awkward that I have to keep the glove compartment open to connect the wire. I don't know why the aux input was not place on the face of the radio.

3) The speakers on the front doors now have a harmon kardon badge. The liners of the pockets on the back seats now have a fabric inside finish instead of the raw hide. My belt fasteners are black. (I could have sworn that my old car had belt fasteners that matched the stone interior) Is it just me or is anybody else missing the nice blue bag for the tools in the trunk? The dvd player takes up the little alcove in the left side of the trunk and thus decreases trunk space slightly.

That is all I noticed for now. BTW I paid $75 for title and registration and got a free year of teleaid. I was always happy to see the ashtray liner which was missing in my old car.

 

Can you describe the bad tint job? I have never seen a blue bag... I think the dvd player location is better than the one I had in my 01E. In that model, the player was in wheel well inside a box on the left side of the trunk.

 

I have the Stone interior and have not yet received my replacement. On my present car, the parts that connect to fasten the belts (the plastic portion of the clip that slides up and down on the belt and the fixed receptacle) are black. So, I don't think that changed.

Jeff

 

congrats on your car, sorry about your probs though. wasnt the dealer supposed to pay for your registration fee?

 

Thanks bmms8. Yeah I called MBUSA and apparently its up to the individual dealer on whether or not they want to pay your registration. It's strange b/c he gave me free floor mats and a discount on the tint but made me pay registration. Drb, I checked again and there is a blue bag in the trunk with the tools (it was underneath the jack). The bag contains spark plugs, a pair of gloves and some metal pieces I believe are for the jack. I think my tint job is bad b/c I can see some clear bubbles here and there and the back window has a few uneven edges. I saw a tinted S class in the dealership and it was a perfect job, no bubbles, scratches, and you couldn't even see any edges. BTW for those of you who are wondering about satelite radio, here's a direct quote from the COMAND manual:

"Additional optional satelite radio equipment and a subscription to satelite radio service provider are required for the satelite radio operation described in this chapter. Feature description is based on preliminary information available at time of printing. At time of printing, no date for the availability of optional equipment required for satelite radio operation had been set. Contact your authorized Mercedes-Benz Center for details and availability for your vehicle."

 

Got my replacement E5090 with Nav...finding Nav to be VERY unsatisfactory compared to Nav on wife's 2003 ML500...plus , although map and printed prompts come in miles, voice is in kilometers.
????? anyone know a fix...MBNA says "that's the way it is"

 

hmm, thats wierd, i remember rayscar i believe had this problem, where do you live? i would try to PM rayscar and ask him what the dealer did to fix it, unless this is the way it is

 

My nav voice and text is english all the way. There must be a setting you missed. MBNA is clueless as always.

 

No my voice prompts are in feet. Someone else mentioned this issue.

 

I am in Northern VA...checked all the books and called Montvale...nothing speaks to this issue!

 

hmmm, well i wasnt right about rayscar, but i remember someone having this problem. i would try to do a search, and find the thread, i am picking up my car today, and ill ask the service ppl about your problem, or i would call a different dealer and ask them

 

I had this problem. I think someone else also. First of all like DRB said, MBUSA is useless again. Anyway, when i first got my replacement the map would read in feet but the voice message was in KM. I made sure to check the multi function controls on the steering wheel and confirmed that everything was in feet, miles etc. I still heard KM. Amazingly, the next day everything was correct. Weird. How long have you had the car? Who knows, maybe the nav system needs to be on for a certain time and "reset" or something. I'm just guessing.

 

I've noticed the changing of some settings do not take effect until the car is restarted, sometimes more than once. It is sort of like cold booting a computer.

 

A navigation question: If you set a destination and stop in route for something. Is the destination still there or do you have to re-enter everything?

I have been driving a 7-series with Nav quite a bit lately and if you shut off the car you lose the destination. It is a real pain to re-enter the destination one letter at a time.

 

etenn, I think as long as your are only out of the car less than 2 hours.. it will RECALCULATE your last route/destination from where you are when you start the car.. and then pick up where you left off. It's done it to be.. stopping for gas on the way home... She speaks IMMEDIATELY once the engine starts.

If it's more than 2 hours.. you need to reenter the destination again.. but it;s easy.. just go to LAST DESTINATIONS and it will be at the top of the list..click OK.

Peter

 

Thanks Peter...I am glad to hear that. The BMW system may have something that I could not find to reinstate the last destination. It did not pick up or continue when I stopped and turned off the engine for just a short time. There is a "manual" but it is only about 6 pages of pictures and gives no useful information on any subject.

 

Isn't that the new "I-Drive" or perhaps for their NAV system.. "I-Forget" =)

Peter

 

I am not getting too far into the BMW 7 series I have been driving as I really don't like it nearly as well as my E-500. It is a good car and has luxury everything...but I would much rather drive my E.

 

I had this problem when I first got my car. I happened upon a solution for this, but I don't know if this will work for you. I went into the system menu while the Navigation system was running and changed the language from bottom of the list (I think Spanish) to English, one by one. By the time I got to French, I noticed that it was giving directions in "miles" and "feet". When I then selected English, voila! I hope this works for you too. It must be a software bug.

 

Some of my experiences with my replacement car:

1) The NAV system did not allow me to put in my exact house address for my HOME location - it just allowed a range, 100 -1 66 for house numbers when my exact house number is 145. When I used the NAV system to get home, it would consistently direct me to a location about 1 mile east of my house. I thought that perhaps the fact that an exact house number was not programmed in could be causing the issue, so I used the "present location" method to enter my house location. That totally solved the probem, it now navigated exactly to my house.

2) The NAV system seems to be about 100-200 feet off in location when travelling in some directions, i.e, when you are in the middle of an intersection it tells you you have 100 feet to go before the turn. Is there a calibration that the dealer can do on the system?

3) My AM audio sounds very raspy during speech - it almost sounds like a speaker is blown, but I know that isn' t the case because I can play a CD very loud and it sounds great. I'm sure if I take it to the dealer they'll tell me its the AM reception, but I know it didn't sound like that in my old car.

4) My car phone system is not working properly, in that it is not reading pause/wait/*/# commands programmed into phonebook entries for sequence dialing when using the dashboard controls. When I use the phone handset it works fine, but when plugged in to the cradle and using the dashboard system, it does not. This one I don't understand, since I thought the phone handset was the dialing engine in both modes of oepration.

5) On my friends Acura, a simple trip computer is integrated into the NAV system, so that it tells you on an ongoing basis the remaining miles and time left to your detisination. Does the MB system not have this feature - it seems like it would be a basic one for all systems...

Look forward to comments.

 

With AM try turning the Pro-Logic function off. I think there is an option for speach or talk if I remember correctly.

Once you have a destination programmed, hit the "info" soft key and it will display miles and time to your destination

 

Hey etenn, did they hassle you about the extra mileage. I have about 14000 and have not picked up replacement yet.

 

It seems logical to me that the only case the dealer would have for an "excess" mileage adjustment would be if the car was leased. For example, a lease with a 12,000 annual allowance would be a problem if the car was turned in at 6 months with 10,000 on it..

I don't see wher they have a case on a car that was financed.