[Aragorn30d]

So i thaught i'd make a thread documenting my findings and progress doing an upgrade on my MULF unit. Its taken a lot of reading trying to get to the bottom of what i needed to do so i figured i'd be good to put it all here for anyone searching in the future.

Many of the writeups existing are from the USA where their systems differ from ours, or didnt quite line up with what i was doing. I also found a few tricks which will save people money!

My car is a 2006 330d E90, with base audio, and my car was built with SA644, which is phone prep with bluetooth. This stuff should also work for cars with SA640 but you need to add some extra parts as you wont already have the mic and bluetooth antenna, or the existing MULF box and its bracket.

When i bought the car the bluetooth was broken, so first step was to figure out what was going on. When i went into the radio the "TEL" option appeared, but instead of a phone symbol it had -- instead.

Some reading on the forums suggested this was a broken MULF unit. I'd been wanting to upgrade to USB as well, so i figured i would get a replacement MULF with USB.

I went on ebay and found a MULF2-High SVS part number 84109224674 . It came from a Mini, but the part numbers matched up and the price was right so i bought it:



I decided that step one was to install it in the car and see if the bluetooth starts working again. I dont yet have the USB parts so that can come later on.

When i went to plug it in a hit a few issues. The big white multiplug didnt fit, and neither did the bluetooth antenna:



As you can see theres a keyway thats moved over to the next notch which stops the plug fitting. The online guides all said i had to get a blue connector from the dealer, instead i simply got my stanley knife out and cut off the two ears:



Reassembled the plug and it plugged right in.

Then for the bluetooth antenna connection there was the same issue, a keyway in a different place. The online guides had a simple fix, remove the white casing and just plug the SMB in directly, however i didnt like that as then the connector wouldnt be locked in place. The official retrofit supplies a new plastic end that you replace the old one with, but i didnt have that... So out with the stanley knife again!:



You can just about see the remains of the keyway at the bottom of the antenna connector, i had to cut that little notch off as well as it was stopping the thing locking home properly. With that notch removed the standard white plastic housing snapped right in. Plugged the optical lead in and went to test it.

And it worked, first time. Car is already coded for Bluetooth so nothing needed changed there, just popped the ignition on and went thru the pairing procedure and it all just worked If you have SA640 you'd need to have 644 added to your cars coding at this point.

The only quirk i noticed, was that the Bluetooth ID of the car started MINI rather than BMW, and the numbers didnt match my VIN makes sense given the MULF2 came from a MINI but i dont know if this will update itself magically over time, if it needs coded to fix it of if its stuck there forever.

The MULF2 unit also doesnt fit in the original MULF cradle properly. I guess you can either buy the later cradle, or just drill some new mounting holes and bolt it on. I've not sorted that bit yet, will do that next and take some photos.

I now need to source the USB parts, and will update the thread once i've done that!

[ptpending]

mulf will show your VIN after coding

[borinous]

Silly question...how can you tell if your car was built with SA644 or not?

I have Tel on my headunit but noticed any wires where the MULF should be in the boot

[Aragorn30d]

Originally Posted by borinous

Silly question...how can you tell if your car was built with SA644 or not?

I have Tel on my headunit but noticed any wires where the MULF should be in the boot

I used the VIN decoder here:
http://www.bmwarchive.org/vin/bmw-vin-decoder.html

It gives you a nice PDF showing all the options.

The MULF is under the boot carpet. If you lift the hinged part, then pull the whole thing forward it should come out and in the usually hidden part of the underfloor you'll find the MULF if you have it.

[Aragorn30d]

Originally Posted by ptpending

mulf will show your VIN after coding

Perfect, need to look into the coding, not done any of that yet.

[Aragorn30d]

As you can see MULF and MULF2 have different hole spacings:



Luckily however, the old MULF was screwed to its bracket, so i unscrewed it, drilled some new holes in line with the new MULF2, and dug out some M4 hardware. M5 would have been better but it worked fine.



New MULF2 all bolted up to the MULF bracket:



Refitted it to the car and its functioning as described above.

Still to sort the Coding, so need to find out whats involved there, and also i need to aquire the USB parts. My brother has an actual USB port, so i'm going to order an appropriate cable once i've figured out which one i need. Will update the thread with progress once that happens! I've also noticed while reading that with 6FL, the Aux port connects to the MULF2 rather than presumably directly to the head unit as it does at the moment. Not sure if that needs changed, but if it does i will rewire it thru to the MULF2 as well.

[borinous]

Originally Posted by Aragorn30d

I used the VIN decoder here:
http://www.bmwarchive.org/vin/bmw-vin-decoder.html

It gives you a nice PDF showing all the options.

The MULF is under the boot carpet. If you lift the hinged part, then pull the whole thing forward it should come out and in the usually hidden part of the underfloor you'll find the MULF if you have it.

I'm 99% sure I've looked under there and there was nothing.

could it be codings been done ready for retro fit?

[Aragorn30d]

So the head unit shows "TEL" if you press menu? Is there a Phone symbol above it, or two dashes like mine had?

Not really sure why it would be enabled if theres no telephone kit unless someones enabled it at some point for whatever reason...

[deepocean]

i do have bluetooth and mic but a644 and a640 not in my vin list how come? anyother source to know?

[deepocean]

i see option 633 but not 644 or 640

[borinous]

Originally Posted by Aragorn30d

So the head unit shows "TEL" if you press menu? Is there a Phone symbol above it, or two dashes like mine had?

Not really sure why it would be enabled if theres no telephone kit unless someones enabled it at some point for whatever reason...

Yep if i press menu it shows far left of the screen and Shows two dashes.

Looked in the boot an there is no module and no sign of any wires unless they have been tucked away.

Only think i can think of the previous owner may have enabled it via coding as a precursor to getting the rest of the kit to retro fit. or it was enabled thinking that was all that was needed?

Ill check the build sheet info see if that sheds some light on the matter

[Aragorn30d]

Originally Posted by deepocean

i do have bluetooth and mic but a644 and a640 not in my vin list how come? anyother source to know?

Is your car a later model? After 2010ish they built the bluetooth into the headunit.

[deepocean]

no am 07 with idrive.voice.sos. Bluetooth

[ptpending]

633 is bluetooth handset in armrest
you better check what module installed under the boot carpet and post it's label picture here and what do you want to get

[Josh_G]

Did you ever get as far as adding the USB in the arm rest?

if so what parts & coding did you need?

[Jozy]

just a matter of changing out the port and routing the lines (USB and AUX) to the arm rest

coding was tricky for me, i wrote about it too - http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1206870

[robygomez]

Very helpful, so my Mulf 2 is malfunctioning if I replaced it with the sameone it should work plug and play am I right?

[robygomez]

Originally Posted by Aragorn30d

So i thaught i'd make a thread documenting my findings and progress doing an upgrade on my MULF unit. Its taken a lot of reading trying to get to the bottom of what i needed to do so i figured i'd be good to put it all here for anyone searching in the future.

Many of the writeups existing are from the USA where their systems differ from ours, or didnt quite line up with what i was doing. I also found a few tricks which will save people money!

My car is a 2006 330d E90, with base audio, and my car was built with SA644, which is phone prep with bluetooth. This stuff should also work for cars with SA640 but you need to add some extra parts as you wont already have the mic and bluetooth antenna, or the existing MULF box and its bracket.

When i bought the car the bluetooth was broken, so first step was to figure out what was going on. When i went into the radio the "TEL" option appeared, but instead of a phone symbol it had -- instead.

Some reading on the forums suggested this was a broken MULF unit. I'd been wanting to upgrade to USB as well, so i figured i would get a replacement MULF with USB.

I went on ebay and found a MULF2-High SVS part number 84109224674 . It came from a Mini, but the part numbers matched up and the price was right so i bought it:



I decided that step one was to install it in the car and see if the bluetooth starts working again. I dont yet have the USB parts so that can come later on.

When i went to plug it in a hit a few issues. The big white multiplug didnt fit, and neither did the bluetooth antenna:



As you can see theres a keyway thats moved over to the next notch which stops the plug fitting. The online guides all said i had to get a blue connector from the dealer, instead i simply got my stanley knife out and cut off the two ears:



Reassembled the plug and it plugged right in.

Then for the bluetooth antenna connection there was the same issue, a keyway in a different place. The online guides had a simple fix, remove the white casing and just plug the SMB in directly, however i didnt like that as then the connector wouldnt be locked in place. The official retrofit supplies a new plastic end that you replace the old one with, but i didnt have that... So out with the stanley knife again!:



You can just about see the remains of the keyway at the bottom of the antenna connector, i had to cut that little notch off as well as it was stopping the thing locking home properly. With that notch removed the standard white plastic housing snapped right in. Plugged the optical lead in and went to test it.

And it worked, first time. Car is already coded for Bluetooth so nothing needed changed there, just popped the ignition on and went thru the pairing procedure and it all just worked If you have SA640 you'd need to have 644 added to your cars coding at this point.

The only quirk i noticed, was that the Bluetooth ID of the car started MINI rather than BMW, and the numbers didnt match my VIN makes sense given the MULF2 came from a MINI but i dont know if this will update itself magically over time, if it needs coded to fix it of if its stuck there forever.

The MULF2 unit also doesnt fit in the original MULF cradle properly. I guess you can either buy the later cradle, or just drill some new mounting holes and bolt it on. I've not sorted that bit yet, will do that next and take some photos.

I now need to source the USB parts, and will update the thread once i've done that!

Dear Aragon30d:
I just bought the MULF 2 with the blue connector to replace the one with the white connector that broke down in my E90 325i, 2010. I followed your kind recommendations but my car is not finding the unit, like it was disconnected or not present at all, I pluged back the old modul and the car can detects it but not the one that I just bought.

My question is, when you plug it in your car did it recognize it at all or after you prograamed it?. Want to make sure it's a software problem or a hardware one. Don`t want to waste money with the tech guy just to find out the modul is defected.

Would appreciate a lot your help.

GREETINGS.

[vorph]

Code HU and MULF first.

[robygomez]

Originally Posted by vorph

Code HU and MULF first.

Thank you a lot for your quick response, I'll get in touch with the tech guy to code it.

Really appreciate your support.

[zippyonline]

Hi guys who seem to know about this. Is the VO for MULF2 and MULF2 HI-SVS the same? I have MULF2, and was planning to get USB by getting the MULF2 HI-SVS unit - and then I need to work out what bits of coding I need to tweak to make it work!?

Cheers.

[vorph]

$644, $6FL and change build date