Radio/ CD player / sat nav

[joewilson99]

Is it possible to use the original (japanese)sat nav here in UK. I'm aware that I need a band expander to get the radio working but was wondering if there's anything similar that can be done to get the the sat nav working. (have got CD that runs japanese version !) Any advice appreciated.

[westonwarrior]

It has not been done yet (unless I missed it)
You would need to input the British maps and change the language

[g8dhe]

Nobody has ever reported doing it so far ! Its a case of just junk it, the band expanders work but you still have a limited tuning range which only gets you the lower half of the FM band over here.
Its simple enough to swap it out, for either a single DIN unit and an extra cubby box, or get an all singing all dancing 2xDIN unit with all you can think of in it The ISO adaptors are very cheap, just make sure to get the year right as later models use a single connector while pre -2000 (I think) is a dual ISO connector.

[amauvis]

or get an all singing all dancing 2xDIN unit with all you can think of in it

Indeed, when I find my Bongo, I'm thinking of getting THIS to go in there. It's very cheap for what it claims to offer, but not an inconsiderable amount of money, so I still need to try and find out whether it is any good, or just a cheap load of rubbish that will break on me within 20 seconds. Sometimes what might be money saved, turns out to be money wasted.

[g8dhe]

The screen resolution is what normally lets them down but at 800x480 its not to bad, there are a lot worse! The other is how do you obtain map updates, I've never seen any advert that explains that!

[Driver+Passengers]

Nobody has ever reported doing it so far ! Its a case of just junk it...

I'd be interested to poke around such a 'junked' unit... do you know what it's running on?

[briwy]

We like a few others have a double DIN unit like that in the Bongo.

Ours runs IGo sat nav which I have used for years on other things. As the units are based on Windows CE you can generally install other sat nav programs if you don't like Sygic. (did try that but considered it not as good as IGo which is very customisable.)

As Geoff says the resolution isn't perfect but it's quite OK for watching DVDs an the telly.

I think the same basic unit can be had for less than that on eBay, seem to remember I paid about £220 for ours last year.

Be aware that you may have to move either the socket for the GPS or TV aerial as on mine it hit the reinforcing bar at the back of the dash. This will obviously invalidate the warranty.

[g8dhe]

Nobody has ever reported doing it so far ! Its a case of just junk it...

I'd be interested to poke around such a 'junked' unit... do you know what it's running on?

Nope, never investigated in detail, but given the numbers made I would guess that most if not all the code will be in ROM and protected, which makes it hard work to do anything much.