[bmwspiff]

Living in Canada, when the weather gets cold, it really is nice to have a heated steering wheel. The recently new-to-me 2009 135i I purchased (I know, not an E90 but same wheel and wiring), didn't come with it from the factory.

It did come with a worn out Msport wheel which we all know never came with a heated steering wheel option.

So looking through this thread, I got a heated sport steering wheel and associated wiring/button/cover from FB Market place and installed it. The standard wheel I started with looks like this:


You know it's heated because of the little blue connector sticking out from the bottom. Unfortunately, it was well used, and well worn.

In driving with it, the heat was great, but I really miss the meatier Msport wheel, which is also shaped differently. It's more oval in cross-section rather than round. I had always planned to put an alcantara cover on it, but thought I'd try to "re-profile" the rim before I put the cover on. So instead of ordering the cover for a regular sport steering wheel, I ordered one for the Msport wheel.

Having both, I could see the exact dimensional differences between the two:
- The overall diameter of both wheels is the same.
- The rim dimensions are round for the sport wheel (more or less) and ~4mm larger in the long dimension of the oval and identical to the sport rim in the short dimension. (hopefully this makes sense).

So I ordered some 2mm thick neoprene foam from Amazon that came with an adhesive backing, cut it into 5cm wide strips that I applied to the face and back of the heated sport rim to mimic the shape and profile of the Msport wheel.

I then used some 200 grit sandpaper to smooth out the edges and fine tune the shape comparing to the Msport wheel as a reference. I covered it using an alcantara cover from Aliexpress. This is my third wheel I've done so I'm getting the hang of how to cover it.

Finally, since it's a sport wheel but I like the shape of the Msport trim, I put the Msport cover on the wheel as described in this thread.

Here's the final product:


Excuse the colouring. The alcantara is black and it feels/looks awesome. The wheel is a bit thicker than the bare Msport wheel (obviously because of the cover), and the foam added makes it feel a touch softer. It matches the profile/contour of the M-sport instead of having simply a bigger round rim. It turned out way better than I was expecting.

Just thought I'd share.

Cost to do all of this (in Cdn$):
Heated wheel, switch and hardware used - $150
Foam from Amazon - $15
Cover from Aliexpress - $20
I used the Msport trim and buttons from my old wheel.

Let me know if you have any questions. Hopefully this helps others!

[oVeRdOsE.]

sweet.

I did the same, but I took a cover that kind of look like the M sport steering wheel.
I also got the OEM msport face.

the retrofit wasn't that bad, got the ring at the scrap yard.

[ptpending]

well
i cannot call this retrim sweet sorry
because the heating is isolated now from outside as well and will less warmer

[oVeRdOsE.]

yep, this is less warm than before. But my cover is pretty thin, so this remain fairly hot.