Ok, well, I'm back....... and I drove home using my newly fitted cruise control more excited than a fat girl in a cake shop..!!! :trampoline:
John at Prestige German Cars
http://www.prestige-german-cars.co.uk/ did a fantastic job overcoming new software hurdles with huge enthusiasm and interest. I genuinely cannot rate this guy and his team highly enough, to the point where I am considering another overnight trip up north for a service on my car when it's due.
John has proved that retrofitting cruise control on a Z4M CAN be done. He took a slightly different approach on my car regarding picking the signals up, as the software I had was the very latest version and varied slightly from Rov1's car and his fitting. The only tricky moment John had was that his wiring cd was scratched so he used other methods and another diagram to work the solution out. I left the camera with John and he took a few pics which I'll upload later.
The cost was very pleasingly well under the £350 mentioned previously in this thread, so for an exact price I suggest you contact John directly on 0191 4566623 for an individual price as it may vary depending on the year of your //M.
The cruise works exactly as per the factory fit, with no shortcomings whatsoever. On the trip back down the M1, it was fantastic holding me at 50 mph through all the specs zones where there are roadworks, which I find an absolute chore. The cruise is amazingly accurate as I was using my Pogo Alert GPS to see how much the speed fluctuated, I found it would drop down 1mph for barely a second going uphill before it took it back up to the set speed. Downhill it holds it at the set speed without any creep up at all. My fuel consumption improved over the trip too, I was seeing 29.7mpg on my display at motorway cruising speeds, whilst I was seeing around 27/28 mpg on the way up. I'm exceptionally happy indeed with it.
For anyone thinking of going for this (and I'd thoroughly recommend it), there is a Premier Inn located less than ten minutes walk from the garage and there is also a metro station two minutes walk away from the garage (Bede) which will take you into Newcastle in around fifteen minutes for £2.90. I travelled up the night before, stayed at the Premier Inn, dropped my car with Prestige at 0900hrs, then popped into Newcastle for a bit of sightseeing on the tourist bus and a nice lunch. John had just about finished his workaround when I got back (he did try to ring me with updates but my phone battery had gone flat!), then fitted my CDV and programmed a few options to my car.
All in all, a very pleasurable trip and a great change to deal with a person and a garage that are so highly knowledgeable and efficient.
So, a BIG

from me to John at Prestige German Cars.
Photos to follow.
Nige.
:yeah: