A/C & Sat Nav problems

Mine with 14K miles on my FF all works fine. Nav has been great.

Rick

 

Air con problems may be similar issue as to this thread, where the air con system was not working as it should, because it was over charged.

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/ff-f12/395196-ff-first-service.html

 

sorry to hear about the problems. 6K on ours and (knock on wood), flawless.

A few (speculative) thoughts....FWIW

The Nav and A/C systems are separate, I'd imagine these are separate issues

On A/C, I've had similar issues over time, most notably after the system has not been used for a while, it's been a variety of issues. Likely a quick and simple fix, under warranty...

On Nav, did you have the issue after a reset (power down/restart).

It will sound funny, but seems like GPS platforms can get lost, especially if it cannot establish or sustain connections to a set of satellites to "find itself". Being in the middle of a city, which can block, deflect or reflect signals, can exacerbate it. (happens to me often in NYC or San Francisco, I literally have to recycle the system and let it find itself).

Did the problem continue/recur after a recycle?

 

At least it's getting fixed.

Ooh. 318d imagine the mpg your going to get. Sorry couldn't resist but it will only help you appreciate your car even more when it is returned. Soon hopefully.

 

I used my aircon yesterday, takes a few minutes to stop blowing hot, but then it's fine.

No radio issues here.

 

Radio could be a bad antenna. If you can gain access to the back of the radio look for an antenna connection. If it is just a plug, Tyra cheap fm dipole antenna temporarily to see if the reception improves. Built in antenna shouldn't be much worse than a simple dipole.

SV

 

We've had a lot of issues with our nav system, too. It gets "lost" a lot. Sometimes it manages to locate itself and orient the map correctly and give good nav guidance, but more often than not, when we start out, it seems to sense the direction of travel as the opposite of reality, which results in it giving us really bad directions. It often figures it out after 2 - 3 minutes, and starts working fine. But those first few minutes are often a real deal breaker, like going the wring way in Manhattan or other big city with lots of one way streets and heavy traffic and no idea how to get where we want to be.

Occasionally the system just locks up and stops providing guidance at all while still seemingly showing a map of our location (sounds sort of like what you described with your car thinking it was in London for along time as you drive away). Symptom here is the map doesn't change the indicated location of the car but still shows changes in direction of travel and altitude as we move down the road. Distance to destination maintains at time and distance when it got too confused. We've had this happen only twice, but in each case this lasted until I shut down car, let it sit for a few minutes and restarted all systems. One instance this continued for a solid hour or more, and 100 miles of travel. We were on the PA turnpike and knew where we were going so just ignored it till we got off the turnpike, turned off car and got some coffee before starting the car back up and resuming nav. At that point it went into its going backwards mode, which resolved itself after 5 minutes of travel. Thank god for Google nav on my Driod...

My first thoughts were bad antenna connection, but now I wonder at the poor coding in the software that finds it difficult to resolve confusing or ambiguous input from the antenna. The display always shows accurate elevation and longitude and latitude info, so it seems like the antenna is sending good info to the unit, its just not accurately interpreting that data. When its just going the opposite direction from reality, I can sometimes force it to find itself by making right angle turns. And often when the road makes a sharp change in direction, it will resolve the ambiguity and start show correct direction of travel on correct road and give good directions.

All this happens in wide open spaces, as well as in cities. We just finished a 14 day, 5,000 miles drive across the US and it got so frustrating that we started just using our cell phones and Google maps to find directions. Which is fine when we have cellular signal...

And none of this seemed to happen in our prior FF.

Our car will go in for a few minor maintenance fixes and tire swap to summer tires this next week and I'll update you on what I find out. One avenue I'll ask our mechanics to explore is the delta between the nav systems in the two cars.

I'll be interested to hear if your car continues to have nav issues and maybe more specific description of same to see if we're experiencing the same issues..

 

we drove our FF a lot this weekend and was on Nav the whole time, though we had radio signal drops on SAT, I am guessing due to signal blockage.

The Nav worked flawlessly.

However, in my X5M on Friday it did the exact same thing Eric described....got lost, could not find itself, at one point I was driving in the East River headed out to sea. I did a "cancel nav" and hoped it would find itself; ultimately when in stopped traffic I did a quick start/stop on the car (reboot) and it was perfect.

I think (?) both cars use NAVTEQ systems, could be a glitch in there, seems like once it's "lost" it goes open loop until you put it to sleep and let it reinitialize, but Eric's longer term issue sounds like a more fundamental code issue. I'll ask my dealer, unfortunately the SatNav is an OEM part from Harman, I'm low hopes that FNA will have the details.

 

I have had the same problem on my BMW X6M. Showed me in the middle of Lake Michigan.

Dealer told me it was a problem with the software reading data off the antenna. They did a software fix and it has been working fine since.

 

You are not the only one who faces problem with satnav. It works perfectly fine on the motorway and bearable in town but only when you drive slowly and very fluidly. Couple of sharp turns with reasonable acceleration out of the corner and satnav suddenly thinks you are two blocks away from where you actually are. Processor is slow and GPS reception is not very good in the FF, so don't bother trying to fix it. You just have to live with that. I was shocked on the first day I have picked up my FF after driving german cars where everything worked on a german way. But then I have realised I know London a lot better than I thought

Roman

 

You must have a software issue with your satnav. I've had my FF for nearly a year now, and other than the annoyance of not being able to input the entire postcode, mine has worked flawlessly. Never been lost, no glitches. I suggest you take it back to Ferrari for an update.

 

Seems things are fine and normal at Ferrari, electronic bugs from outsourced items.

 

Regarding the aircon, just hoping that you didn't suffer the same problem as me. Had a piece of gravel from the road fire a hole into the condenser. This will result in the coolant slowly leaking out, so if your aircon stops cooling in a few weeks, it's likely this. Replacing the condenser will likely set you back around 1K GBP.

That's the problem having a low slung Ferrari with big wide open grilles.