Hey everyone,

I was hesitant on starting yet another BT thread but I think a new thread dealing only with BT on pre 03-04 e60s is warranted. Here goes?

I know there has been much speculation on the possibility of BT on pre March '04 production E60s...these posts usually had no precise answers. Most of the posts mention the solution lies in a hardware upgrade of the TCU and a wire harness.

Well, my friends, I?m sorry to report that this appears to not be an option?

Here is how I came to this conclusion:

I brought my Feb '04 production 530i (Yes - One damn month short!) into the dealership for a few items which included a software upgrade to v13.3. The shop foreman was very familiar with our forum especially the ?pharding? posts and he has performed numerous successful BT upgrades to post 03-04 e60s. He was happy to ?experiment? with my vehicle knowing full well that it would be a long shot?

I can confirm that the car definitely has a BT module as I was able to pair my phone with the car without difficulty... The problem lies in 2 areas. 1) when you go to the Communication menu, it simply states ?Please Activate Phone?? and 2) somehow they were able to receive a call but it was using 1-way communication. I.e. We could hear the other party but they couldn?t hear us. (this was all performed using a Motorola V600)

The best guess at this point is that the duplex communication is only achievable with the March '04 version of the TCU which has one more pin connecting the car's built-in microphone... They spent some time looking at a new TCU and new wiring harness and they were surprised to see what else this harness connects to. Basically, the entire dash, seats, and door systems make there way into this harness. Even if I instructed them to disassemble the interior of the car to extract the old harness and install the new one (which would be huge effort and involve some serious $) the new harness apparently is laid out differently and is not compatible with the type and locations of the old connections.

I do not want to put this issue to bed with this post but it doesn?t look good. I hope the rest of us with early production e60s can work together to figure this out. Surely someone out there knows another technician that is willing to take on this challenge and come up with other options...