i was just told that if i disconnect my battery the navigation unit will reset/loose memory. the mazda dealer told me it takes an hour to reprogram the navigation system to work and costs 99$ to do so.

my battery died after 3 years and i had to replace it, now because a battery died i need to spend 100$ to get the navigation to work again? what bs?

anyone else have any experience with this?

what is this procedure they are doing, it's not like the navigation system has any inputs, unless they have another cd/dvd they put in the drive to load something into it?

how unfriendly can this be to the home mechanic? jeez.

 

I've disconnected my battery dozens of times and it has never reset the memory on my Nav system.

 

Your car will be fine with the batt disconnected for a while.

If you leave the car with the batt disconnected overnight, then your navi might lose all it's saved information. Ask me how I know.

 

how do you know???

 

I'm glad you asked.

I know because I left my car with the batt disconnected overnight, and almost 3 years of saved points vanished.

 

this was msyl the morning after when he realized what had just happened:

 

i would think just disconnecting the battery wouldn't do it, there must be something else in this issue than just that.

i'd imagine that it would make the mazda tech's have nightmares about any procedure that says "disconnect battery"..

my battery completed kicked the bucket apparently, maybe even for an entire weekend as it was possible i didn't go anywhere for the weekend. but this sounds like a lousy deal that if the battery is dead long enough the navi system won't work anymore without a 100$ procedure..

losing the memory for points on the map and stuff ok...

rendering my navi system useless? come on..

 

navi would still be functional.

i've disconnected the batt a dozen times without issue, many for several hours. That's why I didn't think anything of disconnecting it and leaving it off. It wasn't till I wrapped up what I was doing later that I found everything wiped clean.

 

then i don't know what this mazda tech is telling me.

my car is under warantee, the navi stops working, and they are telling me it isn't covered.

 

My battery must have been disconnected for at least 6 hours when I did my stereo upgrade.

what $100 procedure are they talking about??? The initial Nav setup that's done before they deliver it to the customer? I'm confused...

 

do you have an '04 or early '05? Did you ever have your battery upgraded by the dealership?

If not, blame the battery which should have been upgraded so they can't charge you $100

 

this is the tsb the mazda tech referenced me:

http://www.coremazda.com/tsb/mazda3/...se-removal.pdf

i never removed the fuse, and my battery died. somehow this led to the above symptoms. only on 2004 rx-8s with navi's apparently.

now if they want to charge me 100$ for that procedure listed at the bottom? what's that, doing nothing for 100$?!

 

The earlier 2004's came with an older navi firmware. Mazda wasn't willing to upgrade people, so a bunch of people started doing tricks to reset the navi to a state where it wasn't functional, forcing mazda to do the upgrade.

It might just be that mazda thinks you're pulling that stunt and wants to charge you for it.

 

i was sent a free firmware upgrade in the mail, of course, my navi wasn't working at that time so it was worthless. i'll have to find the cd again provided the navi works after this.

 

They have to writ a work order

They have to look at it

They have to read the TSB

They have to solve the problem

Min. $ 100 charge

 

don't forget they need a cup of coffee

sounds like the dealership is just looking for a quick c note

 

go to another dealership; I still fail to understand what the $100 is for.

 

following the procedure should take 10 mins max.

at any rate, i got my car back and the tech there said that despite mazda not covering it under warantee they did the procedure in good faith and no cost.

not that i couldn't have done it myself, but apparently my mazda warantee doesn't cover procedures like this, just replacement parts and whatnot... so my engine could blow up and it's ok.. but the navigation not needing a new part and just a 10 minute procedure.. no can do!

glad to have my car back.

 

I need to resent my NAV too. I has the car shipped from SoCal to NC and the navigation doesn't know I'm here. Any suggestion how to get it to wake up and realize I'm not on the west coast anymore? I already tried taking the disc out and re-inserting it.

 

you gotta go into setup and change it your self