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Where did you get the PIN from for £80?Hi there.
I have a 2014 S212 E250 car with NTG 4.7.
Purchased my key from a dealership in Europe, and then downloaded the V19 2019/2020 map update myself.
Decided to give it a go. I work in IT so what could be there too difficult?
You need about 21GB storage and it must be formatted with FAT32.
I prepared an ultrafast 32GB SDHC Card which has a rating of 95x, put it into my SD Card, and set off to see a friend.
I honestly don't understand why would you pay the dealer the silly prices like £130+? To me it cost around £80, they do ask for VIN and map version to install.
- The process is as easy as popping the SDHC card with update into the slot and starting the igniton.
- It is automatically detected and starts the process.
- You then are asked for a PIN code. It is 6 alpha-num characters and you can enter them with the COMAND wheel.
- The code is specific to (a) Car VIN, (b) Update version.
- Meaning that someone else's code will not work for you, and
- Same code won't work for next update. It's not a PIN-for-life unfortunately. Greed.
- The process then goes linearly from 0% to 100%.
- In addition to maps it also updates the GraceNote database.
- I specifically wanted to test whether you can interrupt the update and then continue where you left off.
- The answer is YES.
- What happens when you continue: You turn on the car and it quickly resumes the update by itself.
- That means you don't have to drive that far in one go. You can just do your chores, and they'll continue to install the update, until you're done.
- No need for battery charger then.
- Took me about 1h 05m overall to install.
- If you have fast storage device, it will be much faster to complete. Do use fast storage, it will save a lot of time.
- From what I heard around; SD Card slot is better than USB slot. This is hearsay and I haven't confirmed this myself.
- What if you started the car after update and reset, but forgot the SDCard with update in the slot?
- It will say something like "So-and-so version detected and you already have it. Reinstall it?" Why? Just pop out the SD Card. No harm done.
This is probably as far down as you can go without hacking the algorithm yourself. Which should be possible -- after updating the unit yourself you have all the software available. But I'm not into that, too lazy.
For those who want convenience, last year I asked my dealer for quotes when my car went for the service. Good thing about it, is that your car will be on the lift anyway, so they don't require to occupy extra space. They quoted me something in the area of £85 inc. VAT. I went ahead with it. Voila, car serviced, cleaned, and with the new version.
Just this time I didn't want to wait 2 months till the current service, so did it myself.