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Post 04 cruise control retrofit N52
- Thread starter jamiecarpenter
- Start date
draggin up an old thread but i dont suppose anyone has the photos from the orignal how to guide? seem to have been removed from forum maybe as such as old post. looking to do this on the weekend and cant find anything on youtube and the photos would be a massive help
thanks in advance
thanks in advance
Jan_Tekin and I did this on our cars at the weekend - thanks to all who contributed, between this guide and the BMW instructions it was all pretty straightforward if just a little fiddly at times 
Jan's is a manual, mine is an auto - no difference in installation. Oh, and make sure you ask Sopers to print and send the BMW instructions with the kit, or do a search on here as I think they are posted somewhere.
Couple of other things (may have been covered, may not...) :
1. It is much easier to get to the loom and cable ties behind the light control unit if you take the air vent out too. The loom is cable tied to the dash so doesn't have much slack - taking the air vent out helps get at the block on the back of the light unit to detach it.
2. To detach the block, use a wee screw driver to press down the catch, then get your fingers in and pull the white clip forward and down. Needs quite a bit of force, you'll know what I mean when you do it.
3. There's a lot of talk on here about what pin to use in the engine side connection. This may be because the BMW instructions are ambiguous. There are directions for the M54/N52 built up to 09/06, and others for N52 built after 09/06. Both route the blue cable to different pins. My car was built 02/06 and Jan's is an 07 - BOTH our cars used pin 39. Some of the electrical box internals on our cars are different, but the cruise control works in both. Perhaps a typo in the BMW instructions, as the M54 was not built in 2006 as far as I know...
4. Finally, the instructions say you need to use the 'repair kit' to extend the blue cruise control loom wire. We could not work out why as the connecters on the loom and the repair section were identical so we did not do this, plugged it straight in and works fine. You may well have to use the repair wire for the M54 engine, but I can't confirm this.
Hope this helps
Jan's is a manual, mine is an auto - no difference in installation. Oh, and make sure you ask Sopers to print and send the BMW instructions with the kit, or do a search on here as I think they are posted somewhere.
Couple of other things (may have been covered, may not...) :
1. It is much easier to get to the loom and cable ties behind the light control unit if you take the air vent out too. The loom is cable tied to the dash so doesn't have much slack - taking the air vent out helps get at the block on the back of the light unit to detach it.
2. To detach the block, use a wee screw driver to press down the catch, then get your fingers in and pull the white clip forward and down. Needs quite a bit of force, you'll know what I mean when you do it.
3. There's a lot of talk on here about what pin to use in the engine side connection. This may be because the BMW instructions are ambiguous. There are directions for the M54/N52 built up to 09/06, and others for N52 built after 09/06. Both route the blue cable to different pins. My car was built 02/06 and Jan's is an 07 - BOTH our cars used pin 39. Some of the electrical box internals on our cars are different, but the cruise control works in both. Perhaps a typo in the BMW instructions, as the M54 was not built in 2006 as far as I know...
4. Finally, the instructions say you need to use the 'repair kit' to extend the blue cruise control loom wire. We could not work out why as the connecters on the loom and the repair section were identical so we did not do this, plugged it straight in and works fine. You may well have to use the repair wire for the M54 engine, but I can't confirm this.
Hope this helps
Bing said:Jan_Tekin and I did this on our cars at the weekend - thanks to all who contributed, between this guide and the BMW instructions it was all pretty straightforward if just a little fiddly at times
Jan's is a manual, mine is an auto - no difference in installation. Oh, and make sure you ask Sopers to print and send the BMW instructions with the kit, or do a search on here as I think they are posted somewhere.
Couple of other things (may have been covered, may not...) :
1. It is much easier to get to the loom and cable ties behind the light control unit if you take the air vent out too. The loom is cable tied to the dash so doesn't have much slack - taking the air vent out helps get at the block on the back of the light unit to detach it.
2. To detach the block, use a wee screw driver to press down the catch, then get your fingers in and pull the white clip forward and down. Needs quite a bit of force, you'll know what I mean when you do it.
3. There's a lot of talk on here about what pin to use in the engine side connection. This may be because the BMW instructions are ambiguous. There are directions for the M54/N52 built up to 09/06, and others for N52 built after 09/06. Both route the blue cable to different pins. My car was built 02/06 and Jan's is an 07 - BOTH our cars used pin 39. Some of the electrical box internals on our cars are different, but the cruise control works in both. Perhaps a typo in the BMW instructions, as the M54 was not built in 2006 as far as I know...
4. Finally, the instructions say you need to use the 'repair kit' to extend the blue cruise control loom wire. We could not work out why as the connecters on the loom and the repair section were identical so we did not do this, plugged it straight in and works fine. You may well have to use the repair wire for the M54 engine, but I can't confirm this.
Hope this helps
Damn i should have joined you guys :headbang:
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That's the same as my kit - we wanted to get the job finished (had to, as we'd cut wires before checking 
), so soldered wires directly into the plastic holders instead. However if you have no time pressure I'd call Sopers and get them to send the right parts.
), so soldered wires directly into the plastic holders instead. However if you have no time pressure I'd call Sopers and get them to send the right parts.Right - Sopers were excellent, as usual, so the replacement parts arrived without hassle and everything is now fitted. I did the cruise control retrofit and MFSW controls retrofit at the same time - probably too much to attempt in one go, but I was having a big balls day. It took a couple of long afternoons; I was checking everything as I went with a multimeter and also cleaning as many inaccessible bits as possible. I suspect the quoted "70 minutes" is the time that BMW estimate it will take you if you aim to royally f*ck it up.
Thanks jamiecarpenter for the excellent instructions.
I've got a few more tips/photos to add to the mix:
Was very relieved when it worked on my test drive, but found it a bit odd using a cruise control system with no visual feedback to confirm that it is on/set. It works well though - the stalk has a really positive action to it.
Thanks jamiecarpenter for the excellent instructions.
I've got a few more tips/photos to add to the mix:- A safe way to leave the battery disconnected it to trap the black lead using the removable boot floor:
- The cowling was more difficult than I expected to remove - needed a vigorous tug and I had to epoxy one of the locating pins back on afterwards. I started cutting it with a junior hacksaw but soon switched to a Dremel; much easier! Finished it off with wet & dry:
- As others have done, I removed the RHS vent unit which made accessing the LCM a lot easier
- Here's my loom work - looks very messy with both MFSW and CC retrofitted - improved only slightly when tied up. The white heatshrink is there because I relocated the connectors on the cables a couple of times; I was concerned about cable tension with the loom plugged back into the LCM (scotch locks are a scary hack!). The black heatshrink is there because, like the OP, I also picked the wrong black/brown wire to start with. :roll:
Untied:
Tied:
(the cloth-wrapped black cable with the scotch locks is the MFSW retrofit)
- Feeding the blue wire behind the dash into the passenger footwell was easier than expected and only took a few seconds - the trick was to remove all the kinks in it first so it was rigid enough to push through. It also helps if you have "noodle arms"
- I noticed that you have to be careful to leave enough cable slack for the steering wheel column to go all the way down to its lowest position
- To pull the blue cable up into the electrics box, I tied an allen key to some gardening string and dropped it down through the hole in the bulkhead:
- I used a galvanised wire tether to pull the blue cable through into the IVM. The wire was very easy to feed through the waterproof tubing but I had to be careful to shape the "hook" so that it didn't snag on any existing cables:
- The PDF instructions for N52 engines are totally wrong for the next step. As others have noted, the pin they suggest that you connect to on the black 26-pin block is already occupied. You can just plug the blue cable directly into pin 39 of the grey 42-pin connector block, as Jamie has done. You don't need either of the blue or black repair cables:
- I thought I'd gotten away with not having removing the glove box, but I had to in the end. I couldn't find another way to push the saw-cut split pin on the upper edge of the lower trim panel into the dash. Without doing this the panel flaps around a bit (why they couldn't just have used another screw here, I have no idea!):
Was very relieved when it worked on my test drive, but found it a bit odd using a cruise control system with no visual feedback to confirm that it is on/set. It works well though - the stalk has a really positive action to it.