[Kdevitt]

Posting this up here because I just hit a dead end when trying to get info on the swap, and any threads I did find seemed to have dead links to photos etc.

I did most of my research into this before even buying the car. I hated the original wheel so much I wanted to be sure I could get rid of it asap. I'd managed to find one picture on Instagram from a Finnish guy who had swapped out his wheel and he was very responsive to messages on there. Turns out he's a racing driver over there.

I wanted the M2 / M4 style steering wheel in the car - but the Finnish guy had gotten it fitted by his local specialist - so he wasn't sure if any coding was needed. I actually contacted some specialists here and they either didn't reply or said it wasn't a job they were able to do. One randomer on Facebook said it was a straight swap - but that a dual stage airbag was needed. So that was my starting point for research - the steering wheel part numbers. A quick search confirmed identical versions were used in Europe and the US, so I bought a new dual stage airbag from Lithuania. You can code the car to use a single stage steering wheel airbag, but I'd rather keep it safe. Followed that up with a used 4 series steering wheel which I had retrimmed by Steering Wheels Dublin.





I'd noticed that some guys are removing and fitting steering wheels on BMW's now without even disconnecting the battery - which I was slightly concerned about - so I went ahead and popped the front open for the first time and disconnected the battery. Wasn't much use - the high voltage battery was still supplying the car with power, and I couldn't see the connection terminal for that, so went ahead and decided to risk an exploding airbag (I'll disappoint you now and tell you it was fine and there was no exploding airbag).



Removing the old one was easy enough as you'd expect - two connectors in place here for the multifunction buttons and airbag just needed to be unclipped. Its pretty handy also that the steering wheel can only go back on one way, you don't want to go through all the hassle of removing the airbag again to straighten up the wheel. First thing to clear up was the airbag situation - and thankfully they were just about identical which augured well.





Just bolted up the new wheel and popped in the airbag and it was done.



... and then it didn't work at all. Which caused a minor conniption. There were no airbag faults which was a positive - but the stereo controls didn't work at all and a cruise control fault popped up. So took it all off again and hoped I could transfer over the multifunction buttons from the original i8 steering wheel to the new one. It basically involved removing the front trim piece form the F30 wheel controls and fitting them onto the I8 ones. Thankfully, that was pretty straightforward - everything just clipped into the new wheel.

Bolted it back up and bingo, no issues - and everything worked as expected. There are definitely different part numbers for the controllers - but part of me still thinks the error was caused by the harnesses not being clipped in correctly. I just didn't want to take a chance - and knew the original i8 ones were working fine.

The trim on the wheel is a brand new M2 competition version with the dry carbon fiber center section - this is the same style wave as the retrofit carbon fiber interior trim kit I want to pick up. Still haven't gotten round to that yet though.