Modern Cell Phone

Connecting modern phone to existing mic & speakers?

I have a 92 850i that I purchased about a year ago.
It had the integrated phone system which I really liked but is not practical since it has to stay in the car.
With today's smaller portable phones does anyone know if there is a way to hook into the cars phone system to take advantage of the built in mic, speaker, auto muting etc?

Manny Hellstern

Yes, this is what I did with my car.
I had a Motorola hands-free docking bay installed in my car.
When I attach my Motorola digital StarTac (actually the one that came in my Mercedes - so I can have one phone I can take between cars) into the docking bay, I am using the built-in mic for my voice, the built-in speakers for hearing the other person, the muting of the stereo, etc.
I used the space where the factory phone is to place a custom made leather arm rest, so I had the small docking bay Velcro-ed over the ash tray area, but it could have been placed ANYWHERE.

Jim Wald

Several folks have inquired about my recent installation, so I finally took a few pics to show how it turned out.

I used the Motorola kit available from their site, although I bought mine on ebay for about 40% of what Motorola charges. The kit includes the main control box, the mounting cup, a speaker, a microphone and connecting cables. I wound up using the mic, but the speaker (a big ugly boxy thing) is not used -- I just cut off the wire to use the connector on the end.

I had to buy a D-sub 25 pin connector from Radio Shack (about $3) that I used to connect the phone kit to the existing connector in the car. I used the ETM to determine which pins in the 25-pin connector to actually use. For some reason, I could not get the stock mic to work, so I wound up using the supplied mic. I'm not sure if this is because of an incompatibility with the stock mic, or some other problem (the prior owner had had an aftermarket phone installed, and some of the wiring was a little butchered, but I did have continuity on the mic wires so . . .?).

Anyway, the final install looks like this:

Here is the mounting cup without the phone:

Here is where I put the motorola provided mic:

Radio mute - Pin 10
Ground - Pin 3 or 17 (either one)
Speakers - Pins 19 and 25
Mic - Pins 14 and 15
Power, switched - Pin 5
Power, hot at all times - Pin 4 or 16 (either one)

I removed the old transceiver unit, and installed the new unit in its place in the trunk. The wires provided with the kit were all long enough to reach there, except for the antenna wire. However, I pulled the stock antenna wire from the trunk into the car's interior, running it under the rear armrest into the center console, where it easily connected to the kit.

Mike Barrett