E30 Zone

Hi all

Fitted the electric aerial, all ok

however: I have a loom in place, however cant find any power to it. Have retro fitted the sensor wire from the blue wire of the stereo, but the plug in the boot doesnt do anything

as far as I can tell the fuse in the box is 28- same as cig lighter.

Any ideas?

Stu

anyone.....?

Don't forget the live feed to the airal will be dead until you switch the head unit on!

Live feed to the aerial (red wire) is live at all times. At the front end, it should be plugged into the pin of the accessories socket that has a red/yellow wire going to it, or, depending on the accessories on your car, a flying plug on the end of a short red/yellow lead coming from the accessories socket.

Hi Brian, for a complete electrical duffer - can you point to the accessories socket? I have a red wire which comes out from behind the clock somewhere and is live I think? Is this it? Also, I have a couple of other wires which could lead back to the electric aerial - but is there a quick way to check which of these I should connect the red one to - and any tests/checks to make sure I don't blow anything.

By the way - I'm retrofitting an original pioneer radio cassette player back into my 318i and trying to link up all coloured wires with the original BMW ones still there after I removed the nasty aftermarket radio and some horrible wiring mess which was unintelligible. Does this help?

Accessories socket is in the back LH corner behind the glovebox, and you need to remove the access panel above the glovebox to see it.
There is a multipin plug and socket in the corner, where the dashboard loom connects to the body loom, and the accessories socket is the largely empty one next to it.

final one, if its a non OEM headunit, will the loom to the rear still operate in the right way?

The red power feed has nothing to do with the head unit in any way. The aerial will go up when you apply 12 volts to it, and come down when it's removed. BMW intended the power feed for the white wire to come from just after the on/off switch on the radio, but you can take it from wherever you like. Some connect it to an ignition switched live so that the aerial goes up whenever the engine is running, some fit a separate manual switch on the dash, and some connect it to the head unit.

got it- sorted, thanks again Brian