Thread: How to change W164 US Comand to European Comand

Hello everybody as I am new here.

I am replacing the US Comand (without navigation) of my 2008 ML320 CDI (pre facelift) to European version of Comand (dvd navigation). I first thought it is a direct swap, but after installing the EU version and switching it on, the only thing that occured was the MB star logo for a while - after about 20-30 secs the device automaticly turned off. I heard somewhere the car will need some Star Diagnostics programming in order to make the new Comand to work. So I set up an appointment for the dealers shop for this programming, and it is not yet done.

Now I would like to ask, is it really so that prgramming are needed, and, as I suppose this is something for the dealer's electrician, what exactly needs to be done within the Star Diagnostics. By reading and searching through this forum I have understood that the instrument cluster needs reprogramming in orer to show the navi info there, but what else?

Thank you in advance,
-yokkeri

Correcting a bit:

Originally Posted by yokkeri

Hello everybody as I am new here.

...as I suppose this is something for the dealer's electrician...

Should be:
..as I suppose this is something new for the dealer's electrician...

Since the unit is used you have to reset all the internal coding.

There are some adjustments to radio amp power and microphones needed.

Thanks for your replay. I will tell this next Monday to the electrician at the dealer's shop.

The unit is now changed. It seem to be pretty new thing to the dealer's electrician, since he first (after 2 hours work) reported it as mission impossible. But I kept on demanding, and finally he found a solution. I don't know what he was doing (I advised him with the info given here by BenzModz (thanks!)), but he was able to pair the unit and the car. I noticed later, that the instrument cluster doesn't yet recognize the navigation, so I need to visit at the dealer once again

Also I noticed it takes pretty long for the unit to reach the satellite fix ("cold start"). And you had to use retrofit satellite gps antenna, as the original one might need a gps splitter, or maybe eliminate the satellite from the (nonusable) Teleaid system.

And yes, the visit wasn't cheap

Originally Posted by yokkeri

The unit is now changed. It seem to be pretty new thing to the dealer's electrician, since he first (after 2 hours work) reported it as mission impossible. But I kept on demanding, and finally he found a solution. I don't know what he was doing (I advised him with the info given here by BenzModz (thanks!)), but he was able to pair the unit and the car. I noticed later, that the instrument cluster doesn't yet recognize the navigation, so I need to visit at the dealer once again

Also I noticed it takes pretty long for the unit to reach the satellite fix ("cold start"). And you had to use retrofit satellite gps antenna, as the original one might need a gps splitter, or maybe eliminate the satellite from the (nonusable) Teleaid system.

And yes, the visit wasn't cheap

The problem you had was that the European comand came from a car which had fibre devices and your car has none. The MOST bus inside the unit needed to be reconfigured so that it terminated internally.