12-05-2015, 02:27 PM | #1 |
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Installing TechnicPnP Active Sound removal harness
Did the installation of the TechnicPnP (TechnicPnP.com) ASD removal harness this morning. Went well.
My car is a 2015 M235xi with the harmon kardon audio package. One thing I've hated from the first test drive is the fake engine sounds piped into the cabin from the ASD system. I thought about coding it out, but didn't feel like investing the cost and learning curve into the software and a cable. TechnicPnP offers an almost-plug-and-play solution to the problem. For $65 delivered off the website, I figured it was worth a chance. Ordered it the week before last, and it showed up on the Monday after Thanksgiving. With a beautiful December day this morning, I took the opportunity to install it. EDIT: There's another thread in the forum (http://www.2addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1181343) that seems to be indicating that the ASD unit adds a noticeable hiss to the sound system. I did notice the hiss in my car before installing the harness, and I no longer notice it. I won't swear the harness was the reason the hiss is gone, just that I noticed it often before I put the harness and amp into my car, and no longer can find a sign of it. It appears that if ASD is the source of the hiss, coding it out will not solve the problem, as that leaves the module active. The cable comes almost ready to install, but it is necessary to swap the locking connector on the cable with the one in the car. It's a trivial piece of work, and I assume it's because the BMW OEM style lock is not available. The cable comes with the connecting pads slid into the lock connector but not clipped in. The electrical connectors are easily slid out. This frees up the lock to be used on the car's harness, with the car's lock being slipped onto the two connectors to tie it down to the ASD module in the trunk. The amplifier and ASD are in the left side of the trunk, behind the liner. There are connectors in the trunk holding the inner liner to the body, one on a hook, one a straight pin connector, and one under the floor tiedown. Biggest nuisance is removing the floor loop. The plastic cover is easily popped off, revealing a large Torx bolt underneath. Naturally, this is in an odd size that doesn't match any of my Torx keys. Fortunately, it is easily grabbed with a small ViceGrip, and once it's loosened a 1/4 turn, can be easily removed by hand. The pin and hook connectors are easily removed by pulling the center section out and then removing the entire connector from the liner. Take care to not break the tabs and the connector can be reused at assembly. One more pin connector remains, hidden behind the folding seat. Drop the driver's side rear seat to expose the connector, and remove it in the same manner as the others. The back edge of the trunk at the latch now needs to be removed. Remove the four pin connectors from the cover plate, pull the trunk edge seal free, and remove the back plate. Once the trunk edge plate has been removed and the trunk lip seal has been removed just past the edge of the trunk liner, the trunk liner can be moved away from the body of the car. Move it about 6" away from the body, reach behind, and unplug the back connector on the trunk power socket. Then move the liner out of the way. The amplifier and ASD module are under the plastic liner support. Lift the liner support out of the way, allowing access to the module. The ASD module stands vertically at the rear of the car. Press in the small grey tab and slide the black locking lever towards the top of the ASD unit, freeing up the ASD signal cable. Using a small pick or awl, release the locking pins on each side of the ASD signal harness and slide the electrical connectors out of the locking connector. Take the black connector that was removed from the purchased cable back in picture 2. Slide the electrical connectors on the harness in the car into the black locking connectors. Push them all the way into the lock until they click into place. Now take the grey locking connector you removed from the harness in the car and slide the electrical connectors on the Technic cable into the lock connector as done in the previous step. Press the connectors into place until they click. The black lock will now be on the harness in the car, and the grey lock will be on the cable that you purchased. Plug the black lock connector on the car harness into the black socket on the Technic cable. Swing the black locking lever upwards until it clicks over the locking tab. Plug the grey lock connector on the Technic harness into the socket on the ASD module in the car. Swing the black locking lever downwards until it clicks over the locking tab. Use a small zip tie to secure the harness to the frame of the car so that it doesn't shake back and forth to create a rattle behind the lining of your trunk. That's it. Test the radio to make sure it works. If there's no sound, one of the connectors is not fully seated into its socket. Go back and reseat both. Reassemble the trunk liner in the reverse order that you took it apart.
Total time was around an hour. Would have been much less if I didn't keep stopping to take pictures. The results are really nice. The background drone is gone on the highway, and flipping to sport mode doesn't increase the level of noise in the cabin. Well worth the $65 and the time to put it in. Couple of things to note on the exhaust sound. There's absolutely NO change in exhaust volume flipping between SPORT and COMFORT when you do this on a car with the stock exhaust. You can argue that the deceleration burble is more pronounced, but I don't think it is. Rather, because the engine is decelerating faster due to the more exponential throttle response, the frequency is higher, which makes it a bit more noticeable. FWIW, George
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2015 M235xi coupe, Black Sapphire Metallic, Black Leather, Fineline Stream trim, Steptronic, xDrive, ZPP, ZTP, ZCW, ZDA, ZDB, 5DP, hk w/BimmerTech amp, Enhanced BT
Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi Last edited by Zooks527; 02-27-2016 at 08:01 PM.. |
12-05-2015, 02:43 PM | #2 | |
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12-06-2015, 08:14 AM | #3 |
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Massive, zooks. Massive! Much appreciated. This is a great diy guide for amp swaps, too.
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12-06-2015, 03:13 PM | #5 |
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Nice job Zooks
Thanks for this excellent post and helping out my next project
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12-06-2015, 07:19 PM | #6 |
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I'm glad people like it. Yeah, it would seem to be useful for people who want to work on the amp.
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2015 M235xi coupe, Black Sapphire Metallic, Black Leather, Fineline Stream trim, Steptronic, xDrive, ZPP, ZTP, ZCW, ZDA, ZDB, 5DP, hk w/BimmerTech amp, Enhanced BT
Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi |
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12-06-2015, 09:13 PM | #7 |
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What a great write up! Thanks for doing this. It will absolutely be my next mod!
The TechnicPnP website is down right now. As soon as I can get some contact info and a part number I will order the harness.
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12-07-2015, 04:15 AM | #8 | |
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Use the contact form on the home page or on the contact page (http://technicpnp.com/contact.html) and he'll get back to you fairly quickly.
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2015 M235xi coupe, Black Sapphire Metallic, Black Leather, Fineline Stream trim, Steptronic, xDrive, ZPP, ZTP, ZCW, ZDA, ZDB, 5DP, hk w/BimmerTech amp, Enhanced BT
Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi Last edited by Zooks527; 12-07-2015 at 10:26 AM.. |
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12-07-2015, 09:57 AM | #9 |
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Thanks! Will do!
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12-19-2015, 09:00 AM | #10 |
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Awesome, awesome thread! Best DIY guide anywhere for the ASD.
Just curious - there are other threads in other BMW forums about ASD, not 2 series specific, but in at least one of those, I thought there was a guy who simply disconnected the connector going into the ASD? Do you get a CEL if you do that in the 2 Series? Here's one such tip for the M5: http://www.autoevolution.com/news/ho...ity-81539.html
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12-19-2015, 09:10 AM | #11 |
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You can disconnect it, but in the 2-series, because we have the low-end audio systems (including hk), it takes the rest of the sound system out with it. It gives you a chance to see what it sounds like without ASD, but it's sadly not a long-term solution. If you want to accomplish that, you can do the same thing by just spending 30 seconds pulling the radio fuse.
You won't throw a CEL, but the dealer will get a system failure if they do an OBD read while the connection is undone. The harness above doesn't give any errors in any mode, as what it's doing is feeding a "give me no output" signal to the ASD module while leaving it in the sound system path. The ASD module remains online, and shows up as functional during an OBD scan.
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2015 M235xi coupe, Black Sapphire Metallic, Black Leather, Fineline Stream trim, Steptronic, xDrive, ZPP, ZTP, ZCW, ZDA, ZDB, 5DP, hk w/BimmerTech amp, Enhanced BT
Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi Last edited by Zooks527; 12-21-2015 at 07:08 AM.. |
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12-21-2015, 12:11 AM | #13 |
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Good write up, if only I had read this before my amp install. At least now I know that the "mini amp" is the ASD unit haha.
Difficulty wise, I would rank coding the same as installing the harness (I've installed an amp and also coded the ASD off). The cable was about $20 from eBay and it takes maybe an hour to watch the basic video guides and download the tools. The torx screw size for the "loop" is T40 by the way. I had to go out and buy torx keys for it as I couldn't loosen it.
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12-31-2015, 03:08 PM | #14 |
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I just did this today. The best mod ever! Thanks to the OP for your awesome DIY!
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01-09-2016, 10:22 AM | #17 |
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Just learned out to code, and that was the first thing I did.
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01-09-2016, 02:36 PM | #18 |
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Not everyone feels like making coding changes, nor does everyone feel like having to go back and redo the changes after the dealer updates the ECU.
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Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi |
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01-09-2016, 02:39 PM | #19 |
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Understandable, but it takes literally five minutes to code. Seems much more intensive to do it this way.
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01-09-2016, 07:32 PM | #20 | |
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This is about 30 minutes all-in, including opening the package. There's also no footprint left in the ECU that you've done anything to the car, as the ASD module continues to answer diagnostic polls and all values remain at factory default. Or, because plugging a harness in means you won't find yourself writing threads like these: http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/sho...t=after+coding
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2015 M235xi coupe, Black Sapphire Metallic, Black Leather, Fineline Stream trim, Steptronic, xDrive, ZPP, ZTP, ZCW, ZDA, ZDB, 5DP, hk w/BimmerTech amp, Enhanced BT
Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi Last edited by Zooks527; 01-09-2016 at 07:54 PM.. |
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01-11-2016, 03:50 PM | #21 | |
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The harness is basically like using a USB cable with your phone: it's your property and it's completely removable, but it can still mess up your phone -- also your property. With coding, well, you mess up and you're on the hook for the mess -- which is the car. Personally, I'd rather have a dead phone (or a dead amp module) than a dead car ... For some it's just not worth the risk. Don't trivialize coding just because you understand it. Some simply aren't willing to go that distance in that specific direction.
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--Helmets are for closers.-- <<Current: "Blackened" '18 NBM Porsche 718 Cayman ... Gone (but not forgotten): "Blackened" MG '15 228i M Sport w/aFe filter/scoop, Hertz drivers, P3Cars multigauge, other goodies>> |
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02-27-2016, 08:00 PM | #22 | |
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2015 M235xi coupe, Black Sapphire Metallic, Black Leather, Fineline Stream trim, Steptronic, xDrive, ZPP, ZTP, ZCW, ZDA, ZDB, 5DP, hk w/BimmerTech amp, Enhanced BT
Prior 40 years: 67 BelAir wagon / 68 LeMans Tempest / 70 Mustang Mach 1 / 72 El Dorado / 78 Corvette / 81 Subaru GL wagon 4WD / 83 s10 Blazer 4x4 / 85 Bronco 4x4 / 96 Bronco 4x4 / 04 Passat 4mo / 09 BMW 335xi |
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