Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Dash PCB-ectomy

My own thoughts are that the PCB solution in its various incarnations was a poorly protected and fragile stop gap measure to counter the increasing complexity and cost of external loom wiring, relays and timers. A step too far to soon perhaps before the inevitable introduction of the body control unit (BCU) used from 2014 on and allowing CANBUS interface to ECU and dash displays, dramatically reducing loom complexity and external bulky relays.

Additions like logic switching, heated screen and courtesy light timers added to existing indicator, hazard, light and heater fan control followed later by cruise, ABS and traction control all became possible within a small protected programmable box, the BCU.

richard - is cruise control possible for cx plus fours? is all the trickery present in the BMW electronics already in the car - if it is how might it be obtained?

regards from ireland!

Can't specifically help there Robbie but highly likely it's possible given John V6 has fitted same to his 2014 3.7 Roadster despite having to use an external GPS speed source as they could'nt decode speed from CANBUS. Your car will also have FBW throttle and being later may make the retro fit easier. These are the guys to contact. Almost certainly as you suggest the infrastructure for cruise control is already there in your car but not implemented, so you may have to rely on third party hardware to interface.

Thanks for your advice, Richard - I’ll send them a mail and pursue it from there

Cheers!

Is it only me or have Roger's original photos disappeared from the beginning of this thread?

Cancel that, they've reappeared.

I undertook my own fit to a 3.7 trad and it was very time consuming (because I'm fussy on QA) and wasted many hours on the CANbus signals and went down the JohnV6 route of a GPS pulse speed signal generator, the programming and available fine tuning takes some time too, as Mogs are light and you get potential power surge as the throttle modulates the speed, but now I find it great on long boring Mway or A1 runs as it keeps the speed to +or- 1 or 2 mph

I would think a pro installer would find a fully CANbus CX install much easier as there is a version of the cruise with a black box brain that can be put in learn mode to find the CANbus data when you do the setup programme

I can recoomend it. It makes long boring M way A road trips like today M2, A2, M25, A12 & A14 much less hassle

Rog, does the immobiliser light still work in the centre of the switches. Does it have its own circuit?

Yes the PATS LED is fully functional and still beating out its coded messages. The LED receives a direct output from the ECU (the immobiliser resides within the ECU on my car) so it’s not processed by the MFU‘s CAN controller, however it does need it's own current limiting resistor. The LED is actually connected to the two little 2.8mm spade connectors visible in my pics, one breaking out of my switch assembly and one breaking out of my interface cable.

Roger, thanks so much for the info, really a great job.

I understand basic stuff so I’ve been comparing your “behind the dash” to mine. My car has the four in line switches, fog, screen, hazard and heater blower (status lamps are above, well they had to do something different for an anniversary car!). Exactly where your new relays sit I have an MFU Box and a Module box, one with a Caerbont sticker.

Presumably on your car the functions are in the box right behind the dials?

Do you know, does anybody know, if this upgrade can be done on earlier cars?

Again, a great job done