BMW E36 Blog

Hi Guys,

Yesterday, I fixed the radio problem that I told you about before. During my lunch break, I went to my electrician and we removed the car’s headset successfully after some trials.

He said that he knew someone (who doesn’t work for the BMW dealer here) who can change the lock code and this will cost me around 10$ 🙂 so I was trying to remove the headset and take it to this guy so he can change the code. Fortunately, I found that the previous owner of the car was smart enough (well at this moment I think he is, but I’m not sure about that if the radio was stolen) and he wrote the unlock code on the back of the radio. I was really happy to see it there because it saved me a lot of trouble. So I entered the code and the radio started playing songs again … oh boy … I was really happy to hear it again.

This problem made me realize how important the music was in the car, I was really getting upset from other drivers so easily w/o the music, but now driving is joyful again.

Now I’m thinking of installing a sound system in the car as the one that I used to have in my previous E30 BMW, but I’m still thinking of it. I didn’t decide yet b/c I’m a little bit out of $$$.

Anyway… I hope you didn’t get bored of this story

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Best regards,

Tony Sticks.

Hello guys,

Well, today I’ve faced a little problem with my car. I tried to start it and it simply refused to do that. The weather was too cold and it seems my car’s battery decided to die. Anyway, I asked my electrician to check it out and he said that I needed to replace the battery and that’s what I did. After that, the car worked just fine. What happened after that is what I think is not fine. My radio became in the reset state after it was unplugged from the battery and now it shows this:

Ummmm… I tried to enter a code like 0000 and it failed. I tried other combinations and the radio replaced this with a "Wait Code" message and totally  stopped responding to any key entries at all. So I had to do my thing and dig this problem on the web. I found many people who faced this same problem before and they all said that when you enter the wrong code for 3 times (which I did LOOL!), the headset will stop responding for around 90 minutes before getting back to its "Code enter" status. This means that the headset should be kept on for 90 minutes in order to reset. So I had to find a far place to go to …. LOOOL! Don’t look at me, I did that and luckily, the radio unlocked in less than 90 minutes. So now, I’m back to the "Enter Code" state 🙂 .

From my research, I found out that I have 2 solutions for this problem:

1. Replace the headset … hell no, I won’t do that. I like my radio and it’s working just fine, so why do that?!!!

2. Take the headset to my BMW dealer and verify that I own this headset and then, they will look for the unlock code on their computers, of course after getting a specific serial # that’s placed on the back of the headset. The problem with this is that I will have to do that after the holidays.

While searching for more information on this problem, I found a website that claims to offer you the code in exchange for 38$. All I have to do is to send them my radio’s serial # and they will send me the unlock code… cool but no. I decided to wait and get the radio to my BMW dealer instead b/c I simply feel that this is illegal in some way.

Anyway, now I’m waiting to do that 🙁 . I will let you know what happens next.

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BMW E36 Blog

best regards,

Tony Sticks.