Original Radio replacement

[Paul Milton]

Hey guys, I am giving up on my original radio. Tried so many trouble shooting tricks read on here with no success. What is a clean suitable replace for our cars so I don't have to cut the original wires.(?)

Thank you

[m60power]

The VDO Continental radios look like they wouldn't clash too much with the E32 interior:

https://www.continental-automotive.c...ainment/Radios

I haven't really looked into them so I'm not sure if you need a simple adapter for the radio connection or if you have to re-wire everything...

[Paul Milton]

Oh wow, these look really nice!! I just sent an email for information. Thank you M60!!

[Cactuar]

The Blaupunkt SQR 46 matches perfectly the interior of a 90's era car. https://www.blaupunkt.com/en/nc/prod.../single/19059/
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...-Modern-Stereo

Quite expensive though (500 USD).

[Paul Milton]

Wow. Ok, I don’t mind paying if it’s good quality. Thank you Cactuar.

[kce1900]

The looks of this Blaupunkt radio are perfect for our cars. Very similar to the Düsseldorf SQR 49 that I bought for my E30 back in 1990.

There are some differences in FM broadcasting in different regions. Here North America stations are 200 kHz apart and use odd decimals. In Europe the channel spacing is 100 kHz. That means that we can use radios from Europe in North America. It would be inconvenient the other way around unless you have an old-style radio that can be tuned by turning a variable capacitor. The second difference it the time constant of the emphasis: 50µs in Europe vs 75µs in NA. This might affect the quality in the higher frequencies. The usefulness of period correct radios from Japan would be limited since their FM band at the time was 76 - 90 MHz. (It was later extended to 94.9 MHz.)

[zapass]

Similar thread, 8 series:
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...-Modern-Stereo

[Paul Milton]

Ok, good to know. Thank you.

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Okay great. Thank you.

[zapass]

I have Blaupunkt ACR 3231. I was hunting for original Bavaria but got this almost for free. I changed illumination to orange to match dashboard and I added aux. Nothing fancy, works fine. I had to use adapter since there is modern type connector.

[Paul Milton]

Okay. Thank you, I’ll look into this.

[kce1900]

Paul, what's wrong with your original radio? Why are you giving up on it?

When I got my car, the radio was working, the cassette player wasn't and the display was semi-broken. The cassette player only needed new belts which I was able to source from a local electronics store. Then I bought an identical radio on eBay and swapped the display. Working fine now. It even has weather band which I didn't know it existed until I read the radio's user manual.

[m60power]

Paul, what's wrong with your original radio? Why are you giving up on it?

When I got my car, the radio was working, the cassette player wasn't and the display was semi-broken. The cassette player only needed new belts which I was able to source from a local electronics store. Then I bought an identical radio on eBay and swapped the display. Working fine now. It even has weather band which I didn't know it existed until I read the radio's user manual.

I also was determined to stick with my factory E32 radio (pioneer KE-91ZBM v4) because it fits the interior design of the car so well and the face plate and buttons are in great cosmetic condition; but the tape deck belts had failed, along with some of the back lighting, and the volume knob started getting 'crackly'. I sent it to a guy in St. Augustine Florida who rebuilds these old BMW radios and it is perfect now I'd have to look up his name and contact info. I don't think even has a website, somebody on the forums pointed me to him. I also love the NOAA Weatherband function, it's one of the main reasons I decided to stick with my original radio.

[Paul Milton]

It won’t reset, I took it out of the car, hooked it up to a battery for over an hour and still stayed in alarm mode. I entered the code the previous owner gave me at the beginning and it didn’t work. 1111(?) I have been working with it for 3 months now and giving up.

I wouldn’t mind keeping it, just beyond frustrated at this point.

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Cool.

[m60power]

It won’t reset, I took it out of the car, hooked it up to a battery for over an hour and still stayed in alarm mode. I entered the code the previous owner gave me at the beginning and it didn’t work. 1111(?) I have been working with it for 3 months now and giving up.

I wouldn’t mind keeping it, just beyond frustrated at this point.

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Cool.

Hmm. If you kept it powered for the min. time required and have the correct radio code it should go out of the alarm mode. I highly doubt 1111 is the code, I've never seen a repeating digit code for the e32/e34, and it's usually 5 digits. Maybe the early radios are less digits? Also, you may want to do some searching but on one of the stock radio manufacturers (either alpine or pioneer, I can't remember) you can just solder connect joints on the code chip of the board and it sets it to a specific code number...

Edit - If it's the radio version without the solder jumpers, you'll be able to obtain the code based on the radio's serial number as long as the BMW dealer is willing to look it up for you.

[Paul Milton]

Yes m60 okay, this makes sense. They wrote down 1111 but the radio wants a 5 digit code, when I type in 5 1’s nothing. I will leave the radio on again for the 1hr plus and hope it clears, I’ll call the local dealer and see if they can help. I was avoiding that part thinking j could figure this out. Haha. Thank you for the info.

[shogun]

The usefulness of radios from Japan would be limited since their FM band is 76 - 95 MHz.

Japan spec. radios forget outside Japan, all the E32 like my 1988 were originally equipped in Japan with SONY CDX 5B817, CD AUTO CHANGER SYSTEM, FM -TV 76-90 Mhz, 1-3 Channel, AM 522-1628 . No more repair service here by Sony for these old sets.

[kce1900]

@shogun I corrected my post. The English Wikipedia says Japan uses 76 - 95 MHz, the German Wikipedia mentions that it's 76 - 90 MHz and an expansion to 95 MHz is planned. Apparently this happened only in 2014.