W221 NTG3 COMAND

[steve.link]

Can anyone reccomend a dealer local to me in South Wales to update the Comand firmware on my car. Its a 2007 pre-facelift W221 with NTG3 Comand. I am wanting to add the 3D view and ETA functionality.

I have rung 2 dealers and they don't seem to understand what I am referring to and want to charge a small fortune to run a full diagnostic check on the vehicle.

Thanks

Steve

 

[Botus]

Can anyone reccomend a dealer local to me in South Wales to update the Comand firmware on my car. Its a 2007 pre-facelift W221 with NTG3 Comand. I am wanting to add the 3D view and ETA functionality.

I have rung 2 dealers and they don't seem to understand what I am referring to and want to charge a small fortune to run a full diagnostic check on the vehicle.

Thanks

Steve

any main dealer can do it they are just stupid
they will insist you put the current mapping on your system BEFORE they will complete the update
they will forget to re enable the AC compressor (its a tick box once the update is complete) when they forget you will have no way to turn AC back on till they plug it in and turn it on. You remind them they ignore you, happens to all customers
the cost is 1hrs labour

if your main dealer doesn't know what you are talking about, find one that is a garage not just a marketing centre

 

[steve.link]

Botus

Thanks - I agree! most main dealers do not understand the product and they all seem to have only non technical people available to speak with customers. I thought maybe someone on this Forum could suggest a competent Dealer near to South Wales

 

[LostKiwi]

You could try Steve at Avantgarde in Clevedon to see if he can do it

 

[JBell]

You could try Steve at Avantgarde in Clevedon to see if he can do it

With COMAND don't you still need the disks???

 

[LostKiwi]

With COMAND don't you still need the disks???

Still worth asking...

 

[JBell]

Still worth asking...

Think comandonline would be the first port of call

 

[LostKiwi]

Think comandonline would be the first port of call

Much further away though...

 

[Alfie]

NTG3 and NTG 3.5 in the W221 use a hard disk Comand system. Maps are loaded from DVD onto the hard drive. disks are then no longer needed.

Firmware is a different issue. This can be done but the car must remain on a stable power supply. I have seen a couple of cars fail the FW update part way through leaving the comand unit totally useless.

 

[JBell]

Firmware is a different issue. This can be done but the car must remain on a stable power supply. I have seen a couple of cars fail the FW update part way through leaving the comand unit totally useless.

That would put me off

 

[John Laidlaw]

I had the firmware updates on my SL500 done by MB Liverpool some time in 2016 , as said it must be stable/they charged me £110 IIRC, but that also included some other software system updates on the car as I was trying to solve a flappy paddle inop issue, the car refused to be interrogated correctly!
Oh, and it took 3 and a half hours!

 

[steve.link]

Avantgard in Cleveland couldn't do it and Comandonline don't offer this service any more for the reason Alfie posted above. Spoke to 3 main dealers in South Wales and none of them understood what I was asking for! I assume if a main dealer was doing the update and it rendered the Comand unit useless it would be covered by MB?

When MB (or any other manufacturer) bring out updated firmware/software it must be for a reason so I don't understand why its so difficult to get updates done. Just about every other item we use, e.g. computers, phones etc have free updates that the user updates himself! I also seem to recall you could buy firmware disks for the older COMAND that I had on my W211 E Class.

I bought an original V16 map disk which took 30 minutes to update from a very old V4. I sat in the car with the engine running to ensure no power issues. This works fine and new roads, about 12 months old, around Cardiff are on the disk.

 

[Botus]

Avantgard in Cleveland couldn't do it and Comandonline don't offer this service any more for the reason Alfie posted above. Spoke to 3 main dealers in South Wales and none of them understood what I was asking for! I assume if a main dealer was doing the update and it rendered the Comand unit useless it would be covered by MB?

When MB (or any other manufacturer) bring out updated firmware/software it must be for a reason so I don't understand why its so difficult to get updates done. Just about every other item we use, e.g. computers, phones etc have free updates that the user updates himself! I also seem to recall you could buy firmware disks for the older COMAND that I had on my W211 E Class.

.

any software update on a car outside warranty is always at the owners risk !!!
an update of a car in warranty is only done when a clear issue "has to be addressed"

how many 10 year OLD computers have you got lying around where you expect 100% reliability for the next 5 years?
and of those how many do you regularly flash with new firmware?

until the latest toys went on cars they ran very basic software on computers with the same capability as 1970's digital watch. So there was little that needed changing and where there was a change to avoid clogging up the car park and to avoid any risk dealers baffle dim owners with bullsh1t in an attempt to stop you bothering them

the reason the car doesn't auto update is it was never built with the capability to receive the updates or understand what to do with them - Tesla's do but then the technology used is 10 years newer in time and about a million light years from a capability perspective

I would just go to ANY competent main dealer and handover money to the tune of 1 hours labour and tell them to get on with it and hope all goes well.

 

[Botus]

bit more on updates on another thread

http://forums.mercedesclub.org.uk/index.php?threads/mercedes-diagnostics.166082/#post-1587438