BMW Performance Carbon Fiber Strut Brace/Bar DIY doityourself

[John in VA]

I just happened to pop in—That’s the way [mention]BCS_ZHP [/mention] bruce does it. Who was I to question!

Hmmm - maybe I need to reach out to Bruce & have him "supervise" my installation. He was ~15 minutes from my Dad's place in Fairfax Station.

[t.er]

Oh man I love that. Very helpful Shawn thanks

+1 thanks Shawn! This will be one of my first tasks once my car comes back out next Spring

[ELCID86]

Hmmm - maybe I need to reach out to Bruce & have him "supervise" my installation. He was ~15 minutes from my Dad's place in Fairfax Station.

He’s a wiz at this.

[ZHPizza]

Alright boys I went ahead and knocked this out while I had the battery out of the car. It's way more involved than I expected but I'm happy with the result.

I started taking step by step pictures then just went full chaos so I'll just dump everything here in some kind of order.

Step before you do any of this shit disconnect the battery terminals. Both to be safe. You're working with positive cables here so that shock will be oof if you're well grounded.

Step 1 disconnect hood switch


Step 2 remove trim


Step 3 pull straight up on the cover in the drug bin while wiggling it free from the plastic rivet



Step 4 disconnect the two positive connections (19 & 13mm)



Step 5 push the plastic rivet out from the backside and slide the terminal piece up to remove

[ZHPizza]

Here's where it gets creative

Step 6 cut shit off the terminal piece (the BMWP bar instructions are a good guide)


Yes, I used a soldering gun to cut the plastic. No, I wouldn't recommend it. Use end cutters where you can or a hacksaw if necessary.

Step 7 cut a lot of shit off the hood switch piece, saving the slide-on terminal cover for later

[ZHPizza]

This got me to where I could mount the hood switch using the existing hole

Original location:


New location:


I marked the hole location, drilled the plastic, and put a nutsert in because I had a new nutsert tool I wanted to try




Oh and trimmed a bit more off the side so that it wouldn't rub the positive cable next to it (see pics above - I'll get there below)

[ZHPizza]

I followed the BMWP instructions on this piece, but didn't like how the positive cable going to the engine was routed, so I decided to make it a side mount

Trimmed the side slide catch down with a razor so the terminal could mount flush


Added some plastic cable wrap and cloth tape over top because why not. The routing of the cable was fine, but I spent several years working with electrical and fuel line routing on vibrating machines and do not play games with this stuff.




Snipped a lot more off of the slide-on cover to not interfere with the side mount


Now it doesn't stay on that well alone, but the rubber trim keeps it from getting knocked off


Fin




Oh and here's how much the hood sensor moved. Mine had worn a hole through the paint so it was easy to see the original contact location when I tested the new spot with a bit of tape.

[ZHPizza]

Ok the last little task was making sure the positive cable in the drug bin wasn't rubbing on anything. I had to pop out the little tie down to make it reach the now top-mount terminal.

I was able to slide that tie mount back about an inch and pop it back into the body. Easy peasy.


But in reaching the new terminal, I had created a rub point on one of the brackets in the drug bin.


Just needed a little standoff that would keep the cable from vibrating on that point, so I grabbed a piece of plastic bracket that I had cut off earlier, put a few new holes in it, and boom standoff.



Now it's safe


Also learned that the hood switch is only used for the alarm system, which I don't have, so I removed it altogether. Could have saved a lot of time if I knew that from the start.

[johnrando]

Very nice work and great DIY detail.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

[BMWCurves]

Thanks for the DIY. I don't think there isn't enough red in it.