RNS-D to RNS-E - A Unique Problem (It Seems)

[cobraBLACK]

I've done plenty of research but can't find the answer so it seems no one has had the same problem.

Can anyone help me out please? It's becoming extremely frustrating as I've had the unit in for a couple of weeks now without it working properly.

I've put the RNS-E into my 2004 (B6) S4 with this harness and it works independently from the car - but I get no illumination or DIS information and it doesn't power on and off at the accessory position, even after coding modules 37 and 17.

I checked for fault codes and there is no CAN bus signal so the car doesn’t recognise the head unit.

I had a go at tracing the wires. It's difficult because there's two of nearly every coloured wire and they're hidden by binding between the connectors so I can't properly trace a wire without stripping the binding down.

The CAN bus wires coming out of the RNS-E harness were blue and grey/black. There were two of each colour the other side of the binding but I noticed one of each colour's pin had the green circled wires (in the photo below) coming out the back of the car's connector. I suspect these are the CAN bus wires from a previous owner's install.

If I have to do something with these (i.e., connect them to two pins in the 26-pin black/green connector) then I'm a little perplexed since it's supposed to be 'plug & play'.

 

[s8craig]

Why are the problems unique? it is quite obvious that you have not fitted a TMC module hence no DIS and you also need to feed a switched live, a speed signal wire and a lighting signal from the cars cluster to the RNS-D harness.

 

[cobraBLACK]

I say it's unique because I bought a 'plug & play' wiring harness, I've done everything in the guides I've seen for the B6 A4/S4 and searching various forums for illumination problems returned no issues for anyone else.

Everything you mentioned should be present since an RNS-D was fitted originally, surely?

 

[s8craig]

Doh my bad, I thought you were installing an RNS-D, that's what lack of sleep does to you.

If it has an RNS-D previous you need to locate it in the left of the boot, remove it and join the two antenna connectors together and then join the 4 can wires Hi/LO to HI/LO so as to join the cluster to the RNS-E.

The Can wires are located at pins 13/26 of the 26 pin connector and they need to go to pins 9/10 of your RNS-E harness.

It's easy if you look on the lid of the RNS-E and D to compare where the wires are.

 

[cobraBLACK]

Doh my bad, I thought you were installing an RNS-D, that's what lack of sleep does to you.

No worries.

If it has an RNS-D previous you need to locate it in the left of the boot, remove it and join the two antenna connectors together and then join the 4 can wires Hi/LO to HI/LO so as to join the cluster to the RNS-E.

This is a new one on me. Could you explain that part in more detail please? I've not heard any reference to these things of which you speak.

The Can wires are located at pins 13/26 of the 26 pin connector and they need to go to pins 9/10 of your RNS-E harness.

I thought as much. If those two female connectors are the CAN wires I can obviously get a male connector at one end of each wire but how would I securely fasten the other end of those wires to pins 13 and 26?

When I used to do my own ICE on older cars I only ever worked with raw wire ends intertwined and taped up or (at best) chocolate blocks; I've never interacted with OEM connectors like that.

 

[s8craig]

it's only plug and play if your coming from symphony/concert to RNS-E, with the RNS-D to E you always have to do the canbus fixes at the TMC and RNS-E or go directly to the cluster from the RNS-E can wires.

Maybe your research was not as thorough as you thought.

 

[cobraBLACK]

I see.

Most of the guides I found were for Symphony/Concert and the little I could find specific to the RNS-D were on navplus.us which no longer exists.

I found some threads where people had done the RNS-D to RNS-E upgrade but there was no mention of this level of work.

Could you point me in the direction of a relevant guide or explain what I need to do to finish the job please?

 

[dsmclark40v]

Hi Ross, are you about tomorrow afternoon at all? I finish work about 12:30 so could have a quick look for you if you would like. From memory I had a similar problem and just needed to swap a wire so we might need to modify your loom slightly which is should only take a few minutes.

Sam

 

[cobraBLACK]

Hi Ross, are you about tomorrow afternoon at all? I finish work about 12:30 so could have a quick look for you if you would like. From memory I had a similar problem and just needed to swap a wire so we might need to modify your loom slightly which is should only take a few minutes.

Sam

That'd be great, Sam. Thanks.

I'll PM you...

 

[cobraBLACK]

Job done!

As I suspected those two spade connections were the CAN wires. Sam checked the wiring for me and we stripped the CAN pins from the 26-pin connector.

The last thing to do is bypass the TMC module in the boot (which is something I hadn't realised since the guidance I'd found related to the Concert/Symphony systems and not the RNS-D).

For posterity:

It's hidden behind a black plastic box in the panel on the left side of the boot. There's a pull-off panel on the box but getting that off doesn't help much; I pulled the whole left side of the boot trim open and there's two bolts and a nut to remove to get the box out (the small 'bolt' is actually a nut so watch you don't drop it). Then I pulled the whole box off and the TMC module is attached to a removable caddy inside.

Then I removed the two antennae and joined them together.

The CAN wires in the plug need bridging. I didn't have a pin diagram but knew from research that it should be orange to grey. Just so happens I guessed right first time:

Pin 1 (orange/brown) to pin 9 (grey/red)
Pin 2 (orange/purple) to pin 8 (grey/white)

Turned on the ignition and the unit fired up, illumination worked and the DIS output RNS-E info.

Lovely stuff.

Thanks go out to everyone who replied to the couple of threads I started, especially Sam (dsmclark40v).

 

[dsmclark40v]

That's alright mate glad you got it sorted

 

[silkworm]

Hello folks,

I have an Audi A6 4B manufactured in late 2001. It was factory fitted with RNS-D navigation.
Recently I upgraded to RNS-E, and I had to remove the TMC module and redo the wiring there.

But the connector of my TMC module has the pins located in a different order than previous stated. Yes, I know that in the initial post, biyitch talked about S4 and not A6, but I think the TMC module paired with RNS-D is the same for both cars.

Here is the female TMC 12-pin connector layout (as you are looking to the pin holes):
.-------------------.
| .6 .5 .4 .3 .2 .1 |
| 12 11 10 .9 .8 .7 |
'-------------------'

...and here are the pinouts:

pin 1 - NC
pin 2 - IC CAN LO (orange)
pin 3 - IC CAN HI (also orange - confusing, isn't it?)
pin 4 - NC
pin 5 - NC
pin 6 - +12V (red)
pin 7 - NC
pin 8 - RNS-D CAN LO (grey/red)
pin 9 - RNS-D CAN HI (grey/white)
pin 10 - NC
pin 11 - NC
pin 12 - GND (brown)

As you may see, with this pin arrangement, the bridging had to be done this way:
Pin 2 (orange) to pin 8 (grey/red)
Pin 3 (orange) to pin 9 (grey/white)

I got these pinouts by measuring, and with a little trial and error (actually, it was logical, because the CAN pins are next to each other - i.e. pin 2 aligned with pin 8 and pin 3 aligned with pin 9, but I tried to swap the bridges to be sure that these were the proper connections - I don't yet understand completely how CAN bus works).

I hope this will help someone in the future, as this thread helped me to resolve the "no illumination/no auto power on-off/no DIS information" problem.

LE: on A6, the TMC module is located under the steering wheel, behind the knee bolster (look on the right).

 

[s8craig]

I think you will find your "orange" wires have a coloured stripe on them to differentiate hi & lo connections so there should be no confusion. The and the pins of the TMC units are identical across all models, so again, I don't understand your confusion with the pin outs.

 

[silkworm]

I didn't mention anything about any confusion. I only noticed that in my case, rewiring had to be done in a different way than it was described in this thread. I had to connect pin 3 to pin 9 for CAN HI, and not pin 1 to pin 9 as described in post #10. My connector doesn't even have pin 1 (actually pin 1 is located on the diagram above, but it's not connected).

I also didn't find TMC pinouts anywhere so I thought I should post it to make things easier for someone in the same situation.

The and the pins of the TMC units are identical across all models

That's what I thought so. But actually, it seems they are not.

I still have the original connector, I can post a picture for reference, if you want.
And yes, both the orange wires have a coloured stripe on them, but it's very faint and it seems it's the same color. Looking carefully, one seems to be light brown and the other one seems to be dark gray (not purple at all). At that time, due to light conditions, I couldn't notice these differences.

 

[s8craig]

It's clearly posted in in your pic, "also orange - confusing isn't it" or am I confusing the word confusing with something else. The stripe is clearly shown and in good light it is easily identified.

And yes you are wrong about TMC units, they are all the same, you have rewired one and I have rewired hundreds

This is the pin out taken from Audi's own internal diagrams

A4 TMC

2 - CAN Bus Low (Infotainment)
3 - CAN Bus High (Infotainment)
6 - Terminal 30
8 - CAN Bus Low (BOSCH)
9 - CAN Bus High (BOSCH)
12 - Terminal 31


A6 TMC

2 - CAN Bus Low (Infotainment)
3 - CAN Bus High (Infotainment)
6 - Terminal 30
8 - CAN Bus Low (BOSCH)
9 - CAN Bus High (BOSCH)
12 - Terminal 31

Look the same to me, but what would I know. All I'm trying to do is correct your erroneous post.

 

[silkworm]

You didn't correct anything and my post was NOT erroneous. The pinouts you posted are the same as the pinouts I posted. If your A4 TMC diagram is correct, then post #10 is erroneous, so read carefully.

The "confusion" I talked about was at the moment of rewiring. But at the moment I wrote the post, there was no confusion anymore - rewiring was already done, everything was working properly, so what confusion could I still have?

I thought I should add my two cents to this community by posting TMC pinouts and a little warning about pin rewiring for people that will read post #10, but if I knew I will have such a welcome, I shouldn't have been bothered registering in the first place. I see you already knew the pinouts, but you never posted it. You didn't have any interest to do that, did you?

Perhaps I shouldn't use the word "confusion", but English is not my native language so my vocabulary is limited.

But the fact remains - there are two wires with the same color on my connector: orange with a stripe (even if stripe colors are different, it's very hard to distinguish between them, even in good light conditions).

This is not a singular case. There are many posts on different forums about wire colors that sometimes aren't the ones we are used to (i.e. for GND or KL31, sometimes black is used instead of Audi classic brown color, and so on). But judging by the level of your experience, I expect you to know that already.