[roadkillrob]

It will work in the early cars, but at some point BMW changed the paddle wiring, thought it was 2010 or 2011, but could have been 2009 with the rest of the LCI changes and things worked a bit different - in 2007 and 2008 for sure, the wiring is 3 wires to each paddle, one wire is up, one wire is down and one wire is ground. When you choose up, it connects the up wire to ground, down, the down wire to grown. If you don't touch the levers, the are just 2 normally open circuits, so unplugging them will look the same as plugged into the car and should have no effect whatsoever. The later wiring setup used a resistance type setup so the car can tell when they are plugged in I assume.

2007 and 8 wiring

Diagrams of paddle connector wire functions:

Left Paddle Connector
______
3-------|<--downshift (press)
2-------|<--ground
1-------|<--upshift (squeeze)
==<-tab

Right Paddle Connector

==<-tab
1-------|<--downshift (press)
2-------|<--ground
3-------|<--upshift (squeeze)

Rob