Z4-forum.com

After looking at this thread for a while, I swallowed some brave pills and installed mine today. What better way to celebrate St Patricks day!

I ordered the parts from Jamie at Sopers on Friday and they arrived Saturday morning, all the way to 'Norn' Ireland. Great service.

Installed and working. Many thanks to the OP, jamiecarpender, for his excellent write up, I don't think I would have found out to use pin 39 without it.

Successfully installed on 2006 3.0si coupe (n52) this evening. Took about 3 hours. Couldn't have done it without this excellent forum, the work done to figure out which pin in this other thread and especially jamiecarpenter's brilliant write up that brings it all together. Thanks guys!

Hi guys I'm planning to do this tomorrow hopefully I between the rain!!! :/

I'm pretty clear with what to do in the cockpit area and also getting the blue loom cable into the bay and that it needs to go into one of the pins which I know people were having trouble with but I've now seen a few pictures of where it goes.

However for the N52 engine (I have a coupe) I'm struggling to see where the other connection happens. Can anyone help please? Does another wire have to be spliced into the blue loom cable, heat shrunk and then be connected to another pin? Just want to be clear before I start

Brilliant write up!

NathanZ4C wrote:Hi guys I'm planning to do this tomorrow hopefully I between the rain!!! :/

I'm pretty clear with what to do in the cockpit area and also getting the blue loom cable into the bay and that it needs to go into one of the pins which I know people were having trouble with but I've now seen a few pictures of where it goes.

However for the N52 engine (I have a coupe) I'm struggling to see where the other connection happens. Can anyone help please? Does another wire have to be spliced into the blue loom cable, heat shrunk and then be connected to another pin? Just want to be clear before I start

The retro-instructions are wrong for the N52.

The black 'repair' cable needs to be crimped onto the blue cable then put into this block:


Which is pin 39 on the block as shown in this wiring diagram:

You don't even need to use the black repair cable... Just plug the blue one right in.

Well i managed to work it out in the end and was all done in a few hours yesterday. I was getting very confused about the 'extra' cables that came with the kit. I was expecting that the blue cable from the loom pluged in and then another wire had to be cut and spliced into.

For those considering doing this, its pretty easy. The reason for the extra cables and the heat shrink is due to the connectors at the end them being slightly different to the connetor at the end of the long blue loom cable.

One thing that did confuse me is that the BMW instructions suggest to cut the connector off the end of the long blue loom cable and attach the shorter blue cable to it and heat shrink it for the N52 engine. However this thread and everyones else suggestion is to use the black cable. This black cable did seem to fit into the socket better so i used that.

I'm in the middle of doing this and have discovered that someone else has had this area apart before as the steering cowel has broken clips and was glued on. Of more concern/bemusement is that one of the wires for this job has already been spliced into along with another different one which then goes into a green plug behind the steering wheel. Does anybody know what this is, normal, another retrofit or a bodged something...?!?

Can I just proceed with the cruise control as per the normal instructions?

Also, how do you get the plugs out of the main X12 block to work out which of the two brown/black wires to splice?

Any help appreciated.

Thanks

Finished it and it works but still curious about the previous splice if anyone knows...?

Bing wrote:You don't even need to use the black repair cable... Just plug the blue one right in.

Blue one defo didn't fit right for me, was a little loose, black seemed perfect. Either way it's the correct pin

Ordered the kit last week and fitted it this afternoon - total cost £100. Took about 3 hours and relatively simple to do (with just a bit of head scratching to find the route into the engine bay).

Anyone else looking to fit this to their E86 there is an identical kit up on ebay now from the same seller: http://r.ebay.com/6vfo2a

I'm happy to help fit for anyone in the Northampton (weekend) or Notttingham (weekday) area. Just give me a shout.

I did the Cruise Control on my coupe over the last three days (between rain showers). I couldn't have done it using just the BMW instructions, but all the help here in the forum made it easy

Done this weekend (and last) to my August 2007 2.5i SE.

Lessons to pass on:

1) Read this thread
2) I ran the cable one weekend, and then did the plugging in the next. Purely personal preference
3) You need to run the blue cable into the smaller black electrics box just forward of the main electrics box under the bonnet. Some threads say you plug in in the main electrics box. I didn't. Take your time when feeding the cable through the trunking. I found taking the trunking out of its rubber 'boots' made life a whole lot easier.
4) Don't use the blue repair cable OR the black repair cable. Plug the blue cable straight into the mythical plug 39 in the DME box. Some instructions (German ones - see point 10) say use the black one on N52 engines, while some say use the blue one on N52 engines. Just don't use either
5) When you get the fat cable out from behind the headlight/fog light switch, cut the top-most cable tie, remove the steering column cowl (if not already off) and feed it down through there. I found the cable wasn't long enough to work with poking out of the headlight/fog light hole
6) The brown and blue pin blocks come out of the X12 cable plug thing. At first look I didn't realise this and took a while scratching my head
7) When you cut the yellow/violet cable, don't cut it too close to the plug, or it will be a pain in the arse to get back into the X12 cable plug thingy.
8 ) Some plastic trim removal tools make the job a lot friendlier...as does copious amounts of tea.
9) When I took the aluminium trim off around the headlight/foglight switch, the clamps (part # 07147073406) - number 4 on here leapt off and ran away behind the dashboard. I can't find them. Hopefully they won't be an irritating rattle from now on...
10) German instructions which confirm that it is pin 39 are here

Hopefully this will help someone one day

Does anyone know the current price for the stalk and loom from Sopers? I really must get around to doing this.

£105 for the stalk and £26 for the loom