This coming weekend we will probably take the M5 on a bit of a jaunt. I’m heading off to do the 3 peaks in a leisurely fashion with a few friends, and naturally it’s essential in my view to take the car with the most horsepower: mine. Facing around 1,200 miles it’s going to be important to have a fair old selection of music in the car, and I fear the six CD changer and in-dash cassette deck isn’t quite going to cut it. So despite the fact that the M5 will probably be put up for sale next month, I’ve decided to invest £93 in a Dice Silverline Duo BMW iPod integration kit.

Installation was surprisingly easy. I can barely remember the details of installing the Connects2 item in the back of the 330d in 2006, but I’m sure that was a good deal more involved, although I can’t think why. Anyway, I whipped out the CD changer, and used the loom adapter that came in the kit to make the Silverline connect to the CD changer’s old cabling.

I fed the cabling behind the boot trim and popped it through the seat back where it arrives behind the arm rest. I’ve mounted the Silverline there, and it has a lengthy cable that terminates with the traditional Apple connector. Here’s a picture showing it connected to my iPhone.

And with the leather backing replaced:

Connected to an iPhone 4, the system works well. The phone plays/pauses as the stereo mode it switched to and from the ‘CD’, volume of course works, and so does skip forward / back. It even attempts to show the track information on the display:

The obvious issue is that I don’t want to have my phone permanently back there. Fortunately we have a fair few compatible devices lying around:

So I thought it’d be nice to permanently mount one of the two old crusty iPods behind the arm rest. For trips such as this forthcoming weekend we can just extend the cable out to anyone’s phone – that’s quite a good solution, but in general I’ll want my phone with me in the front with a large music collection elsewhere.

Sadly, the big white brick doesn’t seem to receive charge from this integration kit (it does from the Connects2 in the 330d), so that’s no use. The silver unit does receive charge, and the audio output is sent to the car, but the start/stop and skip controls don’t work, and neither does the on-screen text. That’s no use either; again that device works perfectly with the Connects2 in the 330d. The 3GS is Diane’s, so I didn’t bother trying it, but the iPhone 4 works perfectly.

I guess if I was going to keep the car for any duration I’d test with a modern iPod and purchase one of those if it worked, but it’s more likely I’ll just stick the car up for sale and pop the CD changer back in so that everything’s nice and standard back there.

So overall I can’t really rate this kit. It’s okay. Sometimes even when connected to the iPhone 4 it doesn’t send any audio and has to be powered down and reconnected. There are plenty of similar complaints on the internet. Maybe more expensive kits are better; for the purpose of a tour of the UK though, this thing will do nicely! :)