This is a full write up, its lengthy so make yourself comfortable.
***EDIT***
My paddles were purchased from Nexon. Apparently he modifies the LCI Paddles to work with our cars. In this write up, I detailed my installation using his kit, his paddles. As a result of his kit, I was not totally at ease leaving the pins removed behind the glove box, and I felt like the splice was less than polished. I decided to later use the Burger Harness to clean up the install. The post regarding this refit is detailed in this thread, post # 7. This post addresses the Nexon system. I will say, that the burger harness will work with LCI Paddles purchased from Nexon. I did NOT need MF buttons, as long as your getting the paddle signal to those pins, and bringing to the shifter your okay. The Burger kit was trying to get me to buy new MF buttons, the part numbers listed were for "up to 2008", my car is a 2011, so ixnay on that...
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Overview:
The installation went off without a hitch! This mod, truly *makes* the entire driving experience! Had I known they were this much fun, I would have made sure to include them when I ordered the car.
I wasn't going to jump into this without exploring all my options and doing my homework, extensively. There are several options and ways to go about doing this. The official DIY thread has 6 ways to sunday, some conflicting information and the info is getting buried there in 8 pages, but the info is in there. When I turned to commercial solutions, information about products were tricky to come by. There is the Burger Tuning kit that I was originally sold on, but was told after I placed my order the kit would not work with LCI paddles. I was later told that the Burger kit would work "with some changes" to the LCI paddles, with no specific info. Whenever I asked them about their product, and how it integrated into the car I was often given no information. That said, I can say, definitively, there is no need for any specific "kit". You can do this job in a way that's fully reversible.
There was a vendor who I did get a LOT of support from, both pre and post purchase support.
Nexon Motors. Ordering info: "info AT nexonmotors.com" . These guys were fantastic. Every single email was answered clearly, and it was answered ALWAYS within an hour, usually within 15 minutes, at all hours of the day. Nexon was very very helpful in making sure I was lining up all the right parts before the install, and they were very open about the installation process, integration and the products they offer. They also offer a kit, that includes some wires and a guide.
My Car: 2011 E92xi (non-zsp)
This project is pretty easy, it took me several hours but I work slow. The process is methodical. If your familiar with cars its well within your means.
Now the good stuff...
If you have a coupe, you already have the 'sport steering wheel'. However, you need a wheel that has the paddle mounts, so you need the M3 wheel, or the M-Tech wheel. I chose the M-Tech wheel and LCI pull type paddles. Part Number 32307839115 (wheel)
The M-Tech wheel is really nice. It's very subtle upgrade, but more like an equivalent of what I had in my car already which is what I was really going for. The trim, airbag, buttons, all swap directly over. The leather is plush, and feels really good. The size is identical to the stock sport wheel. Stitching is all black so it matches nicely with the rest of the car, but the only difference is there is perforated leather on the sides.
The LCI pull type paddles are the (-) on the left side and (+) on the right. they are black with a chrome surround trim and match the interior of the car perfectly.
What you'll need:
New wheel
Paddles
about 10 feet of stranded two conductor 18-20 gauge wire
a good small angled pick that can be used with precision or tiny jewelers flat head screw driver
assorted torx bits
16mm socket
1/4 wrench and short extension
torque wrench (capable of setting 46 ft/pounds)
10mm socket
sharp razor
2 pairs of 18-20 gauge male/female blade terminal connectors
22-26 gauge ring terminal connector
Crimping pliers
wire cutters
shrink wrap tubing for 18-26 gauge wire, its essential you use the correct size!
lighter
ziplock bag
zip ties
A note on wire taps. do not try to use them... our cars have 26 gauge wire running most of the circuits and you cannot wire tap wires this small. If you do it successfully there's a good chance it won't be reliable. Telephone style t-taps are out of the question too because they are looking for a single solid conductor wire. This means we're left moving pins around, and if you're moving pins around you're going to need a steady careful hand with good vision to carefully use a small pick to gently open wire harnesses, connectors, plugs, and carefully back pins from connectors with your pick as well as re-insert them back.
The install:
Set the emergency brake, put the car in neutral, unlock your doors, open the trunk, and push your rear seats flat. Remove the (-) battery terminal by removing the 10mm nut on the terminal (the vertical one starring at you). Wrap your (-) connector into the ziplock bag and secure it. Do not close your trunk from this point on!
Under your glove box there are two torx screws, remove those and drop the panel. Remove the foot well light and aux power connectors, set the panel aside. It will reveal these large harness connectors. You need the BLACK one.
Remove it.
You're looking for Pins 35 and 52. Very carefully, lift the tabs on the connector itself and slide the rows of connectors from the harness, not all the way... Just enough to access the pins so they can be removed with your pick. Remove the pins one at a time and mark them in case they ever need to go back in. Slide the rows back into the harness itself. You will leave those pins OUT of the harness. On your 8 foot 18 or 20 gauge wire length, slide on lengths of shrink wrap, strip the ends, and wrap them around the pins carefully. You may solder the wire to the pins if you like. Slide the shrink wrap up and carefully heat with indirect heat.
What your left with should look like this.
Secure the connections we just made to the wire bundle with zip ties, at least one on each side of the connections we made. Insert the main plug back into the port, and lock it.
Make sure the shifter is in neutral, open the arm rest, carefully remove the center console trim
Whats that, you left your car in park?!
Under the shifter boot there is a red tab, push the tab and slide the shifter back out of park into N. This tab allows us to move the shifter without battery power, a lockout override.
Route the wires along from the factory harness, zip tie along the way, up into the center console to the shifter. Now we're looking at the wires on the right side of the shifter.
These
Here's the part that sucks the most... Perhaps the burger kit has a male female connector that bridges this connection? I dunno, this secret information wasn't "disclosed to me". If you don't want to do the following step then carve out time to go to a store like Radio Shack and build a connector as an intermediate between these two so you can tap the two middle wires. Its simple to do, but these wires are very small so they cant be tapped.
Remove the middle pins from this plug (one at a time). Very carefully use your razor blade and strip back a very small section of insulation. Maybe a inch to a half inch. Slide on a length of shrink wrap. Here, I spliced in two short 18 gauge pigtail leads with male blade connectors crimped on them. Splice them in, solder if you choose, and shrink wrap. Put the pin back into connector, and do this on the next middle lead. Crimp female terminal connectors onto the leads we ran up from pins 35 and 52.
Do not cut the wires, just strip the insulation off for the splice.
Replug in the blue factory connectors to each other, and secure in their clip. Connect the male female terminal connections together as well (from the spliced shifter wires, to the leads we ran from under the glove box).
Move to the drivers seat and get ready to remove the wheel, it's even easier from here...
With your fingers find the dimples in the back of the steering wheel that are covered. They are holes. I used my pick for this, slide the pick or small long screw driver into the holes paralleling the floor, horizontally, you're pushing in a release leaver that will 'pop' the side of the airbag off the wheel. Do this for both sides. Carefully remove the airbag connectors.
Here's what your looking at
Remove the plugs from their ports on the wheel stem. Take note of the smaller black connector, on my car pins 4 and 6 (counted from the left) were EMPTY. This is important to note.
Use your 16mm socket, have a set of helping hands to hold the steering wheel as you turn the bolt.
The wheel will slide right off.
Take it over to your work bench and set it on a towel next to your new wheel that has the paddles installed.
(I started working a bit faster here, things are more intuitive so I took less pictures)
From behind the wheel use the 3 smaller torx screws to remove the trim. pop the trim off, and transfer it to your new wheel. Seat the sides of the trim and the top into the new wheel, and install the screws from behind.
While we are here, take a look at the leads coming off the LCI paddles.
Just two wires in a 3 pin female connector. Open the connector carefully, and remove the pins. KEEP one pin on each paddle, and cut the other pin off. Now both plastic connectors are removed from the paddles, you have one pin for each paddle, and the other lead has its pin cut off. Strip the ends of the leads we cut the pins off of, and twist the one from the left and right paddles together. Crimp a 22-26 gauge ring terminal connector onto this, it will now go to ground. Remove the torx ground screw near the center of the wheel that has the brown horn ground on it, and add your ring terminal to that post. All we have left now is a pin from the left paddle and a pin from the right paddle.
Install the new wheel back onto the car, it's keyed so it can only go on straight (thankfully).
Torque the wheel bolt to 46 pounds.
Remember the black connector with the two empty spots? Open that connector with your pick, and slide the pin from the left paddle into slot #4. Slide the pin from the right paddle into slot #6. The wheel will look like this.
** IMPORTANT ** the three torx screws that hold the airbag bracket in are probably loose if your wheel is new. crank them down until they stop. If you fail to do this your horn will stick way far out.
another photo as a reference.
Install the black connector and gray connector back into their ports on the steering wheel stem.
Install the airbag connectors onto the airbag and seat the airbag back into the bracket on the wheel by pushing it firmly back into place, you'll hear it lock.
Is everything back together??!
Wires we tapped are connected at the shifter?
Center console is back together?
Shifter back into park?
Harness under glove box is plugged back in?
Reconnect the battery terminal.
I did get two codes from the car after the initial start up. I got 4x4 and brake codes only. Once you drive the car for about 15 seconds in gear the codes will clear themselves and go away and not come back. But once they cleared, all systems checked okay, and they never returned. This sounds typical of this project, I've read others have had it occur too.
The paddle shifters work!
If you select them while in normal Drive mode it'll go into manual, then automatically go back into Drive after a brief time. If you're in sport mode, it'll just stay in manual
they are very awesome! I love the new wheel.
Overall, this is project is well worth the time spent, it makes the car so much fun to drive. I'm excited everything worked out as smoothly as it did. I am thankful to have had the support of, this forum, friends, and techs to ease my post mod paranoia and give some advice along the way.