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Moving Cruise Control to the Stalk
This is one of those mods that only makes sense once you’ve driven a stripped-out track car a great distance on the highway. You NEED cruise control. In your track car. Stay with me here.
This was going to be the year I finally got a trailer. But the opportunity to buy this M3 came along, so all of my money for the trailer went into this car. For now, it’s still street legal and I have to be able to drive it to the track and back. So to keep out of jail, I need cruise control. The problem is that the buttons for that were on the sport steering wheel which I replaced with Sparco wheel and quick release. I was able to salvage and adapt the clock spring so I still have a working horn button. That also means the wiring that controls the cruise control is still there.
The beauty of the design of BMWs of this era is that many parts are interchangeable. In this case, I’m going to grab a cruise control stalk off of an E85/E86 Z4. It plugs right into the clock spring housing and all you have to do is jump some wires and modify the housing.
Disconnect your battery and wait 15 minutes for the ABG module to power down (if you still have airbags.) Remove the steering wheel and the steering column housing. Remove the lower housing by pressing the center of the two pins and pry the lower half away from the top half of the column cover. Remove the screw from the top of the housing but you don’t have to remove it from the column, just slide it up to get access to the clock spring set screws.
You’ll need a suitable CC stalk (part number 61316940989) and plug 61138380696. My plug came with four wires already installed. You will need to connect three of the wires. At the bottom of the clock spring, remove the ten pin connector and look at the end of it. The pins are numbered on each row of the connector. Then look at the side of the four pin plug referenced above for the pin numbers . Connect the wire from pin 10 to pin 4 (power); pin 8 to pin 2 (cruise control); and pin 7 to pin 1 (ground).
Plug the stalk into the housing and then plug the 10 pin connector back into the clock spring. Plug the four pin connector you just wired to the stalk and reattach the clock spring housing to the steering column. Replace your steering wheel and airbag if you have one. Reconnect the battery and you’re ready to test the system.
- Pressing the steering column lever upwards (on): Cruise-control system on
- Pressing the steering column lever upwards or downwards (off): Cruise-control system off.
- Pressing the steering column button at the side (I/O): Activates resumption of cruise-control system. The vehicle accelerates or decelerates exclusively from non-controlled operation to the driving speed last set and maintains this speed.
- Pressing the steering column lever briefly backwards (+): Sets the road speed. If the cruise-control function is activated, the current vehicle speed is kept constant.
- Pressing and holding the steering column lever backwards (+): Increases the road speed. The vehicle accelerates for the period the switch is actuated up to its maximum speed.
- Pressing the steering column lever briefly forwards or holding pressed (-): Brakes the road speed. The cruise-control system is deactivated for the period the switch is actuated. However, it is not possible for the driving speed to drop below the minimum set speed.
If it all works as planned, then you just need to modify the lower column housing to fit around the new stalk. The lower cover is part of the crash protections for your knees. Inside the cover is a metal plate and some expanded polystyrene foam. After you measure and cut the outside to make room for the stalk, you’ll also need to remove a little on the bottom of the cover to make room for the mechanicals of the stalk. Measure twice and cut once.
Press center (two of these) 
Carefully pry here 
Note PIN number and trace wire 
Tied off 
Install stalk 
Ready for test 
Remove metal and foam liners 
Plan cuts carefully 
Trim outside of cover 
Also trim a little on the base to fit stalk 
All done
New Exhaust Header and Wrap for R53 MINI
Toward the end of my last track session for 2018 I noticed a significant change in exhaust tone. I thought the larger second position OEM cat had finally failed, but it turns out it was the first smaller cat ahead of it. If you see a break like this, you should also check your motor mounts. Chances are one or more of your mounts is broken or weak, causing excessive movement of the engine. This additional rocking of the engine finds the weakest point in the exhaust and causes either the flex joint or this joint to fail.
This turns out to also be the most common cause of emissions test failures for this car. The joint fails causing a leak and then the second O2 sensor throws a code. If you’re looking at a used car to buy, check out the area circled in red below:
It can be repaired, but if you’re going to go to the trouble to pull off the manifold to weld it, you might want to consider buying a new one so you don’t have to repair it again in a couple of years when something else breaks. The stock part number is 18407566102 and it costs about $1100 to replace with OEM parts. Alternatively, you could go with an aftermarket OE style manifold which costs about half.
A third possibility is to go with a performance header and supply your own cat if you want to keep it road legal. That’s the route we’re trying. We got a Megan Racing Header along with a MagnaFlow 49-state catalytic converter and had it fabricated to match the cat-delete pipe.
MINI placed the electric power steering pump and steering rack very close to the header. If the pump ever over-heats it turns itself off. If this happens on the track (which it has to me) it can be very unsettling as the steering instantly becomes VERY heavy. So before installing the header, I decided to wrap it with DEI header wrap. This video shows how to do it.
Learning vinyl wrap
One thing I really don’t like on the E90 3 Series cars is the “soft touch” plastic coating used on the interior plastic bits. It should have been called “don’t touch” for how easily it is damaged.
I wanted to fix the steering wheel trim which looked like this:
So I ordered some 3M vinyl wrap and went to the junk yard to get something for practice. I found a good candidate from a 2006 325i.
It was in much worse shape than ours. Perfect. I took off the thumb switches and ran it under hot water to remove the rest of the coating. After much rubbing, it looked like this:
Once dry, I placed it on a piece of vinyl and started to stretch and shape it before wrapping the edges and heating it with the heat gun.
The vinyl film is fairly forgiving and as long as you don’t catch a sharp corner, you can really stretch and manipulate it for a good fit. This type of film is applied dry and the adhesive isn’t activated until pressure is applied.
I was really happy with the results so I went ahead and pulled the piece on our car. Start by carefully removing the airbag. I used a Torx 20 screw driver to release the springs on both sides. And set the airbag out of the way. (Don’t unplug it unless you’ve disconnected the battery for at least 15 minutes.)
The panel can now be removed by first removing the three T-20 screws from the back of the steering wheel, and then the two T-20 screws holding the thumb switches in place.
If you have the sport steering wheel, you also need to remove the silver trim by removing four more T-20 screws and carefully undoing the catches. I then used the water method to remove the coating.
Vinyl was applied the same way, only this one was much quicker having done it before. Then the trim was reattached. Installation is the reverse of removal.
It looks great and there’s no more peeling paint by the thumb switches. (And yes, it was raining when I took the picture so the spots you see are rain drops….)
The vinyl wrap was $16 on Amazon for a 1×5 foot roll. The test trim piece was $4 at Crazy Rays. I had wrap left over so i covered an old trim piece that goes around the shift selector too.
So what did I learn? If the soft touch paint is peeling, it will probabably wash off—you don’t need to sand or use solvents to get it off. If you plan ahead and keep things clean, vinyl is pretty easy to work with. I can see how an extra set of hands would help with larger pieces. Heat can be your friend, but don’t over stretch.
Porsche 996 Carpet Replacement
Keeping mind my past experience with a carpet swap in a BMW E30 some years ago, I finally found a good replacement for the carpet in the 996 and, uttering those infamous words “how hard could it be”, set off to do the carpet swap last weekend. If you’re curious how much of your interior you have to remove to do this swap, here’s your answer: almost all of it.
Pelican parts has an excellent DIY write-up which I won’t duplicate here, but do have a couple of helpful pointers for those who endeavor to follow. Here are the key lessons learned from my experience:
- Just cut. Follow the Pelican Parts top tip and just cut the new one in half down the middle (under the center console.) I didn’t do that, and it would have made it a whole lot easier to maneuver into position in the passenger footwell. You might have to use some extra contact cement along the center tunnel since the two halves aren’t held together any more, but it is totally worth it in reduced aggravation. And you won’t have to remove the shifter cables from the shifter or the e-brake handle mechanism from the tunnel.
- Give yourself the weekend. The two hour estimate is off by a factor of 5 (maybe 10.) It took me 2 hours just to remove the accelerator pedal (and I’ve done that before.)
- Bend don’t remove side panels. To release the rear corner of the carpet on each side, you have to remove the rear-seat side panels from their lower catches. You don’t need to remove the entire panel, just carefully bend the panel as you pull up and you can free it from the slots in the carpet and have enough room to maneuver the new one into place when the time comes.
- Frustration ahead. The accelerator pedal can be a bear to remove and reinstall. To remove, take out the set screw, pull forward by the top (what looks like an old cell phone antenna housing) to release the top catch, then slide up to release the cleat. Expect buckets of frustration when you try to put it back. It’s easier to do if you do put it back before you reinstall the seats.
- Don’t turn the key. Once you disconnect the electrical connections to the seats, you will get an airbag light if you turn the key to the on position (to roll down a window, for example). If you have a reset tool like the Schwaben Professional Scanner (with the right Porsche software module from Foxwell) you can reset it yourself. Otherwise you’re heading to the Dealer and pleading for them not to charge you for the reset.
The photo above will help you visualize what’s going on with the accelerator pedal module. When you remove it, you pull out to release the round peg, then pull up to release the square-ish cleat. To install, slide the cleat in first, then push down and forward to lock the peg. Secure with the screw. Or better yet, upgrade the whole thing to a fully adjustable throttle assembly (though that probably means cutting your new carpet….)
You also learn interesting things by tearing apart your interior, like how unnecessarily complex the center console design really is or that there is in fact a coin tray in the console box (which you have to remove by carefully prying the top to get to one of the screws).
MINI Project Index Loaded
I finally got around to indexing the MINI DIY projects we’ve written about over the last 13 years or so. The list is located in the menu bar at the top of the page. Look for BMW E30 projects and Porsche 996 some time soon.
