Hello guys, my name is Matt and I live in a small town in Cambridgeshire.
I was directed here by a chap on another forum and told you lot are a little more helpful than the place I was at....lol....

Anyway, firstly I'll have to admit, I don't own a P38, I recently purchased a 2004 vogue.....

And although I know this place is primarily for P38 owners I hope It's OK to sign up...

I'm having cd changer issues so I'll start a thread in the appropriate place and hope someone here knows what's what...

Thanks chaps.
Matt.

I think you are the second 322 owner that has joined and I know OldShep swapped a P38 for an L322 but then saw the error of his ways and changed it for another P38. Which small town then? Anywhere near me in Yaxley? Don't know too much about the L322 as there seem to be far too many interconnected things where a problem with one affects most of the car. Yes, most of us on here run P38's, new enough to have all the toys but not complex enough that you can still repair them and the parts are stupidly cheap too. Give me a P38 with the 300bhp of the L322 4.4 litre BMW engine (running on LPG of course) and I reckon that would be as close to perfection as you can get.

Anyway, it's a pub (a virtual one admittedly) so pull up a stool and it's your round......

Completely off-topic ............ but did you see that guy's problem was indeed his MAF, Gilbert?? Thanked everyone bar me ............. fukk 'em, last time I offer any advice.

MattyB1983 wrote:

Hello guys, my name is Matt and I live in a small town in Cambridgeshire.
I was directed here by a chap on another forum and told you lot are a little more helpful than the place I was at....lol....

Anyway, firstly I'll have to admit, I don't own a P38, I recently purchased a 2004 vogue.....

And although I know this place is primarily for P38 owners I hope It's OK to sign up...

I'm having cd changer issues so I'll start a thread in the appropriate place and hope someone here knows what's what...

Thanks chaps.
Matt.

Welcome , what kind of problem are you having with the cd changer ?

I've got an L322 as well as the P38. I recently fixed the CD changer in it which wasn't detecting CDs. It involved taking the CD changer out and lubricating the gears inside which had seized. Will go into more detail if that's your problem.

Hi guys,
Firstly, I'm in March so not far from Yaxley GilbertD.

I'm having some wiring issues...
Basically the CD changer was missing from the glove box when I got the car... all the wires and plugs were present, just no changer...lol...

I purchased a reconditioned unit from a chap on ebay but when I plugged it in the fuse (fuse no' 40, 5amp) blew. I then tried a larger 10 amp fuse and that blew too...
The seller of the changer assured me it's not an issue with the changer (although I expected him to say that) and thinks it might be an issue with my wiring...
I've got a few pics to help explain, how do I go about uploading them to here.. I tried the usual way of copy/paste the IMG code from photo bucket but that didn't work...

Copy and paste the Direct link from Photobucket into the little box that pops up when you click the insert picture button (and ignore the bit that says enter image description here as it doesn't seem to do anything).

But looking at the diagram, there isn't a lot to it.

Personally I'd say the changer you've bought is buggered or it's for a different model and the pins in the plug are different. It may be an L322 but 'lectric bits are the bits that me and Marty can manage no matter what the car (as 'lectric is work for both of us).

It worked... lol....

Anyway, if you hadn't guessed, that's my car...

I'll add some pics of my wiring/plugs in a min.

So some pics...

This is the ten pin plug that goes into the changer
The two wires to the left are both live..

The brown wires are earth's I'm guessing. When I put a bell tester between them and the chassis I get a beep, although the reading is over 200 ohms (not sure what that means to be honest)

There's also this three pin plug... seems strange that three wires go into it but only two come out...

Weird? Looking at the plugs you've got and the diagram, all the wires seem to be there just not quite how I would expect them to be. Brown wires are power, not ground, ground wires are black on modern wiring. The 3 pin plug you've got would appear to be what is shown as C0941 on the diagram, a red/green from fuse 40, the white/grey with yellow band appears to be the iBus connection but why the brown doesn't continue to where it should I've no idea. On the larger plug, you've got the colour codes that match the diagram but where the extra wires come from or what they do, appears to me to be a bit of a mystery. The diagram shows three wires, a white/blue, a white/red and a white/brown at the plug marked C1353 but you've got two of each. Then you've also got the red/green and the white/grey/yellow that should be on a separate plug as well as a pair of spurious brown wires. Unfortunately, unlike the diagrams for the P38, the ones for the L322 don't show a face view of every connector, just some of them so I can't see what C0941 and C1353 should look like. What year is your car as the diagram I'm using is for models up to 2005 so if it is later it may well be different.

I'm wondering if there should be another cable that attaches to what you have and goes between that larger plug and the CD changer unit. What connections are on the changer, the same as you have plugs for?

This is one reason why, if I ever do decide to risk an L322, I'll avoid a Vogue like the plague. I'd rather have a standard sized hole I can fit my own DAB radio into and use a separate satnav that doesn't need a CD that costs more than the average Tom Tom when it gets out of date. But I have been accused of being a Philistine..............

Car is a 2004 model year...

From what I've worked out from searching the Web is,

The white/grey with yellow bands is the ibus... this should be live as it is..
The red/green is the battery 12v.
The browns are indeed earth's, brown is always earth. And any wire with brown on it is related to earth somewhere...

So what are the other two, white with blue stripe and white with red stripe....

OK, more research has revealed that the white/red stripe and white/blue stripe is audio input left and right...

Red/green is battery 12v

White/grey with yellow bands is Ibus

Brown (pin 3) is earth screening for p.c.b (whatever that means)

Brown (pin 8) is the main earth

The two brown/white wires are audio left and right grounds...

So at least i now I know what all the wires are

Would a poor ground cause the fuse to blow do you think ??

According to the diagram above, the white/brown wires (WN) go back to the radio head unit along with the two white/blue and white/red so they are probably the matching grounds for the two audio channels (although even if it is a balanced system I would have expected them to be twisted with the matching audio wire). So that has identified what they all do now we need to identify why the fuse blows when you plug the CD unit in. Assuming the socket on the unit matches the plug, connecting the red/green should power it up and not blow the fuse. If you put a meter set on the Ohms range, what do you measure between the pin that the red/green connects to and the chassis? What do you measure between the red/green pin and either of the pins the brown wires go to? I suppose it's always possible that the unit needs to be insulated from ground?

I'm confused as to why the browns are ground but I suppose there must have been a change. Under the old Lucas standard colour code, brown was always unswitched live, on the P38, all main live feeds are brown (or brown with a tracer colour) and my partners 2004 Merc also uses brown for live. Maybe the EU have produced a standard and dictated that ground should be brown these days (although with mains wiring, brown is live, even curiouser still)........

Brown is ground in BMW world, and an early L322 is basically a mix of E39 5 series / E53 X5.

Ahh, so it's just the Germans then. That would explain why all the Rohde and Schwarz equipment we have at work has black and white mains leads. Doesn't explain why Dina's C180K Coupe has brown live wires though.....

I try and get another go tomorrow and play around with my tester... I'll report back with the results for the pins you mentioned...
Thanks chaps.

Gilbertd wrote:

Ahh, so it's just the Germans then. That would explain why all the Rohde and Schwarz equipment we have at work has black and white mains leads. Doesn't explain why Dina's C180K Coupe has brown live wires though.....

That's odd, I'm sure my parents 2002 C270 used brown for grounds too. Not entirely sure though, it is a hateful hateful car. Smoothest car I've ever driven, but mechanically it is the most sadistically designed heap I've had the displeasure of working on.

I digress.

Digress away. The Merc 1800 and 2 litre petrol, 4 pots suffer from what is referred to as the £8 pipe. It's a breather between the inlet manifold and crankcase which, being made of rubber, turns into a squidgy, sticky lump of gloop with holes in it. Upshot of that is that the idle goes lumpy and the MIL is permanently on with lean mixture errors. Problem is that the inlet manifold is underneath the throttle body and MAF which is bolted to the intake of the supercharger. At least the replacement, which costs just £8, is made of silicon so you only need to do the job once but it's a 5 hour job to change it so you don't want to have to do it that often. The only other job I've had to do on it was fit a new sidelight bulb, even that needed a degree in gynaecology......