Left Coast Geek

Yeah, and on the sides, those dimples with tabs behind them look to be snaps... I wonder if taking the black faceplate off by carefully levering those numerous black plastic tabs all the way around it? A plastic trim tool might do the trick.

ArchAngel2190

Well folks, it's been a long run on this thread. I can't thank enough all the people who have chimed in trying to lend a hand, but I do have to make special recognition to @CaliBenzDriver and @Left Coast Geek for their continued involvement in the thread.

Earlier in June I took the car to the Benz dealer and asked them to just figure out what was going on. They returned an invoice for US$330 to determine the following:

They estimated the cost of a new COMAND unit from them at US$5794.37 and a reman unit at US$4600 or in that range (these two prices off the top of my head). In the process of replacing they also broke a front vent and asked to replace them but at US$300/vent I declined and asked them to fix the broken vent as best as possible - I include that information as it was part of the labor charge.

I purchased a used unit on Ebay for around US$430 and installed it myself. I brought the car to the dealer again for them to code the new unit and it was returned to me yesterday for an additional charge of $169.99 for the coding of the new radio. It is important to note that I was asked for the donor car's VIN for this, as they need that to deauthorize it from the old unit or something similar. I didn't have that and in order to get around that issue the dealer had to contact big MB to get them to authorize some kind of workaround. I don't know exactly what was done but I do know it was eventually able to be coded without that VIN. I did lose nav function from the new radio, so now every time I press the nav button it asks me to insert a DVD with the correct nav data. If anyone has any enlightenment on that and/or where to buy a nav data DVD, it'd be much appreciated.

All in all the problem has finally been resolved and I now have only left to rectify the issues with the navigation. I am also having another problem with the new unit where I cannot change the language, which I could do on the old unit. In settings the language option is greyed out. Any ideas what could fix that? It's not a critical issue as I can obviously read and write English but I'd like the ability to change it back to German.

If I find some spare time, I still have the old unit. I might try to pop that thing open again and see if it can be fixed - if it can, I will either resell it or reinstall it depending on how much of a pain it would be.

Cheers!

CaliBenzDriver

Bitteschön ✌️

What ever you decide, we can try to help you loose the bugs from your original $6000 headunit for free.

During disassembly... take pictures and make some markings to help you with the reassembly puzzle.

ArchAngel2190

Danke sehr! Ich danke dich für dein hilfe!

I managed to discover the Engineering and Dealer menus in the new headunit... would changing the region from US to ECE allow me to change languages or does that start to create all sorts of other problems? I also noticed that the Linguatronic(?) does not work - if I press the voice button on the steering wheel, it beeps and presents the prompt screen, but it seems to crash/cancel itself before it can process what I've said. In the Engineering menu it registers the command but it doesn't actually do anything. I tried to get it to dial a name earlier and it said the first part of the person's name but then stopped short and never dialed. I also cannot get it to run the individualization sequence - it opens a dialogue box with a yes/no option but it closes it so fast I cannot read what's on it.

On the plus side, the new headunit came with 6 DVDs, all of pretty fantastic movies, so hey, worst case I got free movies out of it hahaha.

Quint22

Interesting info. Have to ask why they charged you for breaking something on your car?

ArchAngel2190

Well they didn't necessarily break anything. It's a used headunit I bought off Ebay that I paid them to code... there was no guarantee that all the features would be the same or function the same. That said, I do wish everything worked like it was supposed to. It's a little frustrating given the time and money I have spent on this endeavor, although the fact that I have music in the car again is a huge plus.

ArchAngel2190

The exact verbage of the error I receive when I try to press the maps button is "Map data does not match COMAND. Please insert hte map data DVD with the correct map material." I still have the old head unit with the hard drive on it - if I swap the hard drive, does anyone think that could fix this issue?

CaliBenzDriver

In prior post you mentioned the unit is from "North American" market and you want to run "European" maps - - Now the map software is complaining about a hardware mismatch.

​​​​​​I doubt moving your original HDD over to the used unit is going to fix that.
These units have all sort ID_Strings to create a security road block against stolen or used parts.
the VIN Number
the current odometer
the EU/US local market
​​​​​​...

I'd be surprised if security can be defeated by a quick HDD swap
​​​​​​

ArchAngel2190

I’m not interested in Euro maps, I was just curious if a switch to ECE region would let me change the language. The used and original head units both run US maps, US region, and US language.

HDD swap being impossible would make sense though, I had read elsewhere that these were super-coded to the car. It seems like a huge waste of time considering how involved one has to get to remove the head unit.

Quint22

That is what I was referring to, not big deal was just curious.

CaliBenzDriver

Choices ' R us... :

You can wrestle under your dashboard for an afternoon or let a "factory trained technician" start by replacing the nearest part that's in stock

ArchAngel2190

Oh I can easily and quickly replace the hard drive myself, but my question is whether you think that would make a difference...

ArchAngel2190

Ohhh gotcha. I didn't hem them up about it as the car is almost 10 years old, has 214000 miles, and came from North Carolina where it baked in the sun without tint. All the plastic inside the dash is pretty brittle as a result of that.