Hi all,

We just picked up a used GT with the 430N media center radio. It's my first van after two dozen or so small cars and small SUVs. We will happily fill it with dog hair for years to come and perhaps it will see me to my retirement in 10 years or so.

I traded a 2013 Ford Escape Titanium towards the vehicle - the dynamics of the two could not be more different. The van is tremendously more comfortable! I'll miss the HID headlights and more modern radio in the Escape (not to mention the very nice powertrain and speedy dynamics of the chassis overall). What I won't miss is the bumpy ride, thirst for premium fuel, and iffy interior build quality (the interior was creaking and squeaking after only three years, I spent a lot of time eliminating annoying noises in the cabin).

There are a couple of things that I did not find clear answers to reading through the forums or searching the internet.

1. I'm puzzled by the mileage computer in the dash. When I push the reset button, the DTE does not reset - the van has a full tank of gas but the DTE is stuck on some low figure - 119 miles or something like that. How do I reset that?

2. I can't seem to get reliable operation of USB devices from the port in the upper glove box. I have some external SSD drives that I formatted to Fat32 and tried to use, I tried with multiple USB to SATA adapters and some external cases but nothing worked. Even USB flash drives are giving me issues where they disconnect. An Ipod Classic works perfectly. Is this normal for these radios?

3. The navigation functions are super slow. It took the radio about 10 minutes to find an address - we gave up and used one of our phones and left the radio on on the hourglass. By the time it found the address we were more than halfway to the destination. I tried the secret engineering menu (radio off hold the media, radio, and menu buttons for ~7 seconds), to reset the GPS and it seemed to help a little bit but it's still incredibly slow compared to an old standalone GPS unit I have. Is this normal (based on the vintage design of the radio)?

 

1. are you resetting it correctly...check the owners manual
2.some usb ports are charge only...they are not wired to the radio. check owner manual.

you can go to driveuconnect.com and check device compatibility.

3. that is not normal. one time event or every time?

 

Thanks for the input, primem. We took the van out today for our Saturday errands and figured out a couple of these items.

Yes, following the instructions in the owners manual. It seems the DTE is calculated on the fly and the reset will only take care of the average MPG calculation. Since we just got it with a full tank of gas I will wait to see how it pans out over time as the DTE is steadily climbing as we drive (it's now at 151 miles).

The glove box USB in this model definitely has a data connection as per the owners manual and the fact that it can control my Ipod and read a USB flash drive, although the USB flash drive worked intermittently.

But *part* of the problem was simple: as a used car, it seems that someone was a bit rough on the USB port. The port is at an angle and it seems that someone removed a device from it with pressure in the wrong direction. This squeezed the connector pins (slider pins) so that they weren't making good contact. I've been supporting desktop computers for a long time (30 years) and have seen this before. The end result was that the connection would get lost if a firm bump jiggled the connector. The Ipod worked well by luck - the Ipod cable I was using just by chance had more robust pins - but even that went out while we were driving. My wife figured it out - we got it working again, she manually jiggled the connector and the connection to the Ipod was lost.

I'd normally recommend having the USB module replaced but like I said I've seen this before and knew how to fix it. Using a fine dental pick with a tiny L-hook on its end I gave each of the connections a little bit more spring, and it's rock solid now. If the problem comes back I will ask dealer service to replace the part under the warranty. Note that if you decide to do this you have to be extremely delicate about it as it is easy to pop the front of the pins out which will destroy that connector pin in the port the moment you plug something in to it. Lifting the middle of the slider pin by about 2mm is all you need.

So it was a simple mechanical issue and I thought to put that in here in case someone searching might be helped by it.

The SSD still does not work - it may be that it's simply too big (480GB) or that it draws more than 500ma which is what the port is rated for. The port on the radio itself seems to read it just fine, so the limitation is with the auxiliary port. I have some other smaller SSDs around, so in time I may experiment more with those.

Every time. I went back into the engineering menu and reset the GPS again and initialized the memory. It is still quite slow to search for things - press the button, wait 30-40 seconds, input the street number, wait more than a minute, input the street name, wait even longer. It's painfully slow, it took more than 10 minutes to find the address we were looking for. Once it was found it took only a minute or so to calculate the route and start the navigation. I am wondering if I should try initializing the hard drive next but I don't know if the map data is stored there and I don't have a way to restore that.

Of course, since the overall design of the 430N is so antiquated and both the wife and I work in tech, we have been inspired to consider replacing the head unit with something that will have Android Auto. I'm not convinced this is the best path as the unit has good sound and the navigation wasn't a "must have" but after the Sync 2 unit in the Escape (nav but no Android Auto) and with Android Auto in the wifes little VW Golf performing really well it's on the table as a budget item for us.

Now I'm in search of some sort of sturdy mat I can put over the seat anchors when we stow the seats. Our Mopar cargo liner arrived today, it fits perfectly but I am concerned that our 80lb mutt will puncture it by stepping in the well surrounding the anchors.

 

OK, so the DTE is fine after refueling with approximately 17 gallons.

The 430N will be replaced under warranty. Tech could reproduce the problem but apparently no field repair (reflash) is done in to try to fix the unit.

I found a nice mat that can be trimmed to fit so as to cover the seat anchors. It's recycled PVC so no smell, thick enough to protect the mutts paws and the cargo liner and thin enough to roll up when not in use:

 

Well, the replacement head unit was indeed the fix for the slow nav and now it shows the Gracenote version too.

I've experimented with a bunch of SSD hard drives, I finally found an old 60GB SATA II one that works with a USB to SATA adapter. The key seems to be current draw, I have a USB power draw tester. All of the SSDs that don't work are SATA III and draw more than an amp when first plugged in to a PC, but the old 60GB one only draws 0.46 amps peak. I am assuming that the port (rated for 500ma) simply doesn't work.

I will try to find a 128GB SSD in one of my old systems that may be a SATA II drive, perhaps I will get lucky.