[Drithen]

I just did this tonight. I'll add my impressions to the thread, much of this has been already above, but I think there's some value in my summery:

- The leather boot on the auto shifter lifts up without much force.

- You need to unplug two wires from the auto shifter, there is very little slack on these wires, so if you have large hands, as I do, this is tricky.
- One of these pulls down, the other slides forward.

- When you lift the center trim part, you are lifting the 'wood' only, the black plastic it's attached to stays put.
- You need to unplug your idrive to lift this trim.
- In order to get this out you must rotate the plastic base of the leather auto shifter boot such that it passes through the hole in the trim.
- In order to lift the 'wood' trim out entirely you muct unplug the lighter. Squeeze the sides of this plug and pull.
- The ashtray assembly is attached to the 'wood' trim, not the car, so it lifts out with the trim.

- use a torq 10 screwdriver, not a 20, as in the original post.

- If you don't care about your ashtray's future, and you highly value the finish of all your car's trim, do what I did and disassemble your ashtray to get the cover off, rather then pry it off.
- I unhooked the hinges the cover sat upon and removed it from the ashtray assembly. I was then able to use a flat head screw driver to unlatch the five attachment points hidden on the underside of the ashtray cover and pop off the 'wood' cover. It then snapped onto the sunglasses cover, and was scratch free.

- Putting everything back together was much easier then taking it apart.

I spent about an hour doing this, in total, and it's perfect- no scratches, chips or rattles. Well worth the effort IMO.