Retrofitting radio controlled clock

[Adrian E]

I'm pretty sure I posted the part numbers for the bracket and screws somewhere back in this thread - was only about a fiver from memory and Sergey and I worked out a much quicker way to get to it than we used to fit mine, once we could see what needed to come out

[The_Laird]

Want to fit it for me at the meet?

[Adrian E]

I won't be there always seems to clash with a race meeting I'm organising!

Sergey may be able to help? Main thing is having some LED light so you can see what you're doing, plus screwdriver to remove the side panels on the transmission tunnel, socket set (1/4" best as there's not much space to work) and the hook tool to remove the centre air vent (best done after removing the stereo and all associated brackets), then a tiny drill (Dremel or similar is ideal) to start the hole for the screw that hold the bracket in place

[The_Laird]

My radio signal dropped over the weekend and hasn't returned.

So what's the 'easy' method you discovered for access to the OEM location?

[Adrian E]

Side trims off the transmission - remove wood trim from stereo - undo bolts through side holding the climate and stereo in place and remove the whole thing - remove centre air vent using special hook tools

That gives you full access and you just need the metal bracket and 3 screws to go with it

[Daz 70]

Basically I'd fitted this a while back but as it's pre FL it does not have the channel 17 or whatever it was to log in an alter by 1 hour.... then with lots of stuff going on with family etc.... anyway... having had a fresh look....

it turns out to be simple...... (typically) on mine (Pre FL) with no key in the ignition if you hold the hour button for 5 secs (or there abouts) it flashes something like 00 then simple press either the hour or mins buttons to increase or decrease the hours to make correct.

This will only work with the key out (or at least no turned on anyway)... (clearly my mistake before)... still as I say had lots going on with family so was not really with it...

So basically if you have a pre FL D2 then it's also possible to have a radio controlled clock. :-)

Daz

[notorious]

Congratulations Daz. Well done. First pre-FL D2.

[Adrian E]

Here's a weird one - haven't used the car for just under a fortnight (not that unusual at this time of year for me) but when I fired it up this morning I noticed that the date wasn't displayed on the dash.....

Still had the radio symbol displayed, so presumably if it had failed one or more clock updates it wasn't enough to take that away.

I ended up removing the fuse to reset the instrument cluster and giving it a bit of time - clock and date now back and set.

Will be interesting to see if it happens again - I know the battery is in excellent health so I'm thinking it may've been a number of failed clock updates over a period of days, resulting in the date going AWOL?

[notorious]

I never seen anything like that. Assume what happened is a software glitch in the cluster.

The DCF77 protocol is error tolerant due to presence of parity bits P1, P2 and P3 in the signal.



The following validation methods are applied:

* parity bit checks: whether the received P1, P2, P3 parity bits are the same that were computed from the received data
* range check of received data e.g. whether the received 'Month' value is smaller than 13, etc.

If signal is received with an error another attempt is made. Information about number of synch attempts and and when the attempts are made is documented in this thread. If all attempts fail for a certain period of time the mast symbol will disappear and the clock will switch to manual mode until first successful synch.

I confirm that the mast symbol in my car never ever disappeared after I installed the receiver in the OEM location.

[Adrian E]

I'll try a scan tomorrow and see if there's anything indicating a reason....

It's been faultless for me too to date