First, I would like to thank each and everyone of you gearheads hanging out in here for giving me the confidence to disassemble a steering wheel on a $60k vehicle.
There are few points that I would like to add for the novice modder like myself..... when attempting to remove the sport wheel and swapping it for the M3, or M5 wheel.
1. Make sure you disconnect the battery, I was thinking of just popping the airbag fuse but after careful consideration....it was just not worth it.
2. Before you even think about this project make sure that you have two types of Torx bits avail to you. The screw driver kind and also the type that you can use on a 1/4 ractchet set. I cannot say this enough. I had both types and it it saved my booty tonight and here is why....
2.a Start you MOD at a reasonable time. In my infinate wisdom I walk by the rig in the garage at 10:30pm after walking Neo and I said what the hell...lets put this bad boy on. by 11:05pm I had the SPORT wheel off, after some trickyness just like PEP advised.
2.b When you take your new wheel out of the box you will notice there is only one wire sticking out in the middle and there are like 4 in the old one. Take the old harness out of the wheel and install it in the new wheel. I was not expecting that, I was thinking it was going to be plug and play. It was remove/install play.
3. Ok..so I am hitting the home stretch right on time it was 11:20pm, right on time. I take both hands and put them at 10 and 2 on the airbag to reseat and pop it back into the wheel. So I think here goes nothing..Pop Pop~!, Ok the bag would not seat in the wheel correctly at all!
Talk about dissapointed.
I came back to the pc and re-read the instructions and it said that sometimes you might have to hold the clips and seat at the same time. Well since I have only two hands I improvised with vise grips, screw drivers, and two old socks.....the socks were to protect the M wheel...so anyway with the clips wide open the airbag would still not seat all the way into the wheel.
It was at that moment I realized what I needed to do. In the old wheel lies the seat tray....in the wheel is a steel tray held to the wheel by three bolts. My airbag fit perfectly in the "old tray" that came out of the Sport wheel. There are three torx bits staring up at you. You will need to use a ratchet set to break the locktight locks and then simple put your old tray in your new wheel!
By taking the extra five minutes to switch out the seating trays for the airbags from inside the wheel you can potentially save yourself time and aggrevation trying to get your airbag to fit in a brand new tray. With really tight or loose trys
Okay...so everything is done...nice wheel...I checked all of my connections but I have two lights on the dash now....the brake indicator and the airbag one....now I have not driven anywhere as of yet. I will know tommorow if something is really up......I will upload pics of eveything tomorrow too!