youngbmw

hello guys, i have a MASK head unit in my e60 2010 lci, the audio is terrible and there is distorted bass which leads me to believe that the head units amplifier has packed up!, i then went through the route of retrofitting a cic unit but the e60 retrofits are £800+ which is a no no for me, so foolishly i purchased a 2014 f10 cic and tried to fit it in, i then sadly learnt that the e60 runs kcan1 protocol and the f10 runs the kcan2, i have now found cheap cic units from e90s and e70s which i am sure run the kcan1 protocol, any ideas if this will work? i have a cic faceplate for an e60 which i can transplant and all the trim, similarly i can find a way to fit the e90 or e70 unit in physcially, its just the compatibility im worried about

richie281vn

It is likely plug and play where you can play music, radio and media except for the control of air conditioning and other function like lighting. If you want it to be fully functional then a full flash must be done to replace the E90 gateway with E60 one. check out the bmw coding forum on how to.

Another thing is the gap between the CIC unit itself and the interior trim since the e60 cic poked out a bit more.

youngbmw

Those things are fine, as long as i can listen to music and get pdc etc, i have found an e70 cic going.for dirt cheap, is this easier or harder to marry to an e60 compared to an e90 cic? Also is there a process for removing swapping the faceplate?

E60550imsport

For anyone who comes across this thread with the same question, let me tell you right now, DO NOT attempt this. You’ll be wasting your money. I bought an E90 CIC unit for cheap thinking I’d save some money, and while it will technically work, it won’t work properly.

If you are in Europe or outside of North America and you have a low-end spec model with manual air con controls and no PDC, it will work, but you won’t be able to adjust some of the settings.

If you have automatic climate control, you will be unable to control your vent temperature. This is crucial because if you have it set to the cold setting in iDrive but it gets cold outside, you won’t be able to switch the vent settings over to warm. So even if you turn your heater on full blast, it’ll just blow cold air. The reverse is true for hot weather and iDrive set to hot. In order for CIC to be able to control your climate settings, you have to flash the firmware a special way, a very complicated way. I won’t go into detail because it’s very convoluted and will not work properly. You also have an ICOM to do this. It requires advanced knowledge of DATENs and WinKFP, an ICOM A+B, and at least a 50 amp power supply with a setting for flash programming (Schumacher $700)

Even if you have an ICOM and get the firmware flashed in a specific way, it still will not work correctly. This is due to the hardware differences in the E60 version CIC vs E90/E70.

You will not be able to adjust ANYTHING in the settings menu. Time/date, light settings, etc. none of it will be able to be adjusted.

The PDC screen will glitch out and the picture of your car will be all pixelated and look like the system crashed.

I did all of this, flashed it and coded it and spent hours on making it work, and it still did not work correctly. At all. Do yourself a favor and forget about even trying. You’ll be left having wasted that money because you’ll end up having to buy an E60 CIC unit anyways.