What'd you do to your BMW today?

[Badical 14]

5 hours ago, Navin said:

Tell me more about this paddle swap, are the F series paddles a direct swap? Looks great, would love to do the same with mine

Pretty easy really.

Have a good read of this thread: https://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1358509

Basically, unscrew the paddle assembly from the wheel, unscrew the paddle from the mounting base, remove the plastic hinge pin from the old and new paddles and swap them over and screw everything back together. As you keep the original circuit board base.

I kept the rubber pad with the conductive buttons from the f series paddles but cut off the spring guide as the original base has a plastic spring guide and also swapped over the f series spring as it is stiffer.

Result is an OEM look and a much nicer feeling paddle actuation.

I just bought the replica f series paddles you see on eBay or AliExpress, quite surprised at the quality, then again I wasn't using the circuit board on those ones.

[E30 325i Rag-Top 1,641]

Finally managed to get some decent garage time over the week-end after a very hectic number of months.

Friday night finished spraying the repaired lips of the Alpina reps from the Convertible ready for new boots on Saturday morning. Silver paint has gone a bit funny in placesa, fingers crossed a good cut and polish with sort that out.

Saturday morning off to P&S Autocentre to get the above mentioned new boots fitted, Hankook asymmetrical somethings as Toyo don't offer 205/40/17s. Whils there in amongst the talking rubbish with the GCs in the workshop I cut a replacement section off an E30 donor car thanks to Pete's pick-a-part @P&S. Note to self - need to buy a sabre-saw they are heaps of fun! After chopping the rear quarters out of the E30 race car to fit the FRP panels I had a re-think of how / where to fit them onto the car, so this panel is basically to go back onto the car to replace a bit (too much...) that I cut off.

Saturday PM, cleared up and cleaned out the garage to get enough room to start working on the race car again in earnest and put stuff away properly rather than just dumping stuff randomly until it's not possible to move about any more. Started sizing up the FRP panels and the quater panels to be 100% sure where to cut and join stuff. Finished moving stuff around and started drilling out spot welds on replacement panel when the Mrs. informed me she will be wanting the spare garage fridge to be operational for Christmas - that's right, the fridge that had just been buried behind a stack of wheels and tyres, suspension and body parts.

Sunday, took the convertible for a spin around the block to start getting ready for new boots and WoF for summer. Whilst it was out of the garage cleaned all the crap off the floor and moved all the stuff out of the way of the fridge. WIth the garage all clean and tidy it enabled me to get my bench pillar drill out to end-mill the spot welds off so as to leave a better finish for welding. Fingers crossed I can make some progress over Christmas hols, will resurrect the race car thread and add some more photos in there!