Head uniit flickers - BMW Forum

bmwengineer · 10-15-2005, 07:44 PM

I just hooked up an eclipse cd8443 in my '97 328i using a harness. Currently my display flickers when my headlights are on. Has anyone experienced this before with this or any other head unit out there? Could it be an issue with Bmw's connector? Any advice is welcome.

da_bull · 10-16-2005, 07:21 AM

Does it only flicker with bass or all the time? constant or no real pattern to the flickering? I ask this because the Eclipse headunits draw quite a bit of power through the factory leads. You may be ending up running a power wire to the battery and using a relay (I can walk you through that). Temporarily run a heavy gauge (14ga. or bigger) power and ground wire from the battery to the radio. tie the two power wires (red and yellow) together and hook to the power wire; ground the black one to the larger ground. See if the problem goes away.

bmwengineer · 10-16-2005, 11:01 PM

Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try and let you know how it turns out. One question though, if i'm not mistaken the red wire is for the acc. switch. If I tie it in with the Batt. wire will I lose the ability to use it with the key in the acc. position?

da_bull · 10-17-2005, 05:20 AM

You are correct, I am just having you do this to see if the problem goes away. If it does I will walk you through wiring a relay so it will still operate off the acc. switch.

bmwengineer · 10-17-2005, 06:05 PM

I feel I need to clairfy this before going further. By flicker I mean the head unit cycles through the brightness settings when the headlights/parking lamps are on. You can visually see it jump from one setting to the other in the brightness setting of the display. The display on the stock head unit had gone out previously, which led to the question about the factory harness.

da_bull · 10-17-2005, 06:40 PM

On your aftermarket harness, unhook any of the orange / orange/black / orange/white wires. If it only does this when the headlights are on, those are the wires that affect those settings on the radio. If the car is supplying a weird voltage that the radio doesnt know what to do with, that may be doing the weird thing on your radio. Those wires dont really need hooked up, they are dimmer leads that are supposed to dim with the dash lights. Try it and lemme know...

da_bull · 10-17-2005, 06:41 PM

btw make sure to tape (or something) those connections up so they wont blow your dash fuses.

bmwengineer · 10-17-2005, 07:35 PM

I went ahead and unhooked the orange/white wire. Like you said above the unit no longer dims with the dahlights. Fortunately the unit does not have an irritatingly bright display anyway. The car has rotary dimmer switch, essentially a potentiometer, I wonder if the head unit cannot recognized the variable voltage allowed by the switch.

da_bull · 10-18-2005, 05:20 AM

Thats possible. Like it doesnt really know what to do with 8.5 volts (or whatever voltage it is). Am I supposed to be bright or dim? You might still be able to use that feature if one of those wires do not change voltage when the dimmer is activated, only 12V on, 0V off. Yeah Eclipse has never really made a bright display or full of colors. Enjoy...

Bill

bmwengineer · 10-19-2005, 10:19 PM

Thanks for the help!