VE SS: Steering Wheel Controls Fixed!
Part of the obnoxiously expensive kit to put an Android Auto head unit into our VE Commodore involved an adaptor to make the steering wheel controls work with the head unit, and for the most part it worked satisfactorily. The primary complaint we had was that our VE is an ex-police car, so it still has the “police dash” which collects a “trap speed” if you scroll down, and displays the trapped speed if you scroll up.
We can live with that, it’s just a momentary lack of a digital speedo when changing songs, who cares?
But when I put the reverse camera in, I managed to screw something up. The steering controls did not work. I configured them again (once I remembered that the head unit must be powered up, but set to ‘Source Off’ before it will allow you to configure the controls), and it would work until the keys were turned off. Extremely disappointing.
I wrote the manufacturer, asking for their help, and to their credit they wrote back quite quickly advising that the connection between the BCM and the HVAC (which also controls the steering/audio interface) is dodgy and sometimes the car gets confused. They advised to reset the HVAC, then completely remove the entire thing, remove the negative post of the battery, wait 20 minutes, then proceed to reinstall, connecting the battery post last.
Because I have the object permanence of an infant, I completely forgot about this until this weekend (just over 12 months to the day from when I heard back from them), when Sabriena happened to mention how annoying it was to her to not have the steering wheel controls, so on Sunday I decided to have a look at it.
Removing the entire fascia and head unit is an extremely long job (probably two hours all up to remove and reinstall it), and it seemed like a whole bunch of extra steps, so I decided to skip parts of it first and try my luck… I simply removed the negative battery post, turned the lights on on the car to make sure it was dead, and went off to do something else for about a half hour.
I came back, reconnected the battery post, set the time, configured the steering wheel controls, then waited. On Monday, Sabriena drove it and had steering controls, then today I did the same and also had steering controls… So I’m chalking that up as a win.
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Horsham, VIC, AustraliaNavigation: Older Entry Newer Entry