Jet Black ZHP Mod-A-Palooza

[robincx]

Very dangerous. John, I just read the entire thread, this is going to cost me some $. Beautiful set up, lots of great ideas in here, kudos!

[johnrando]

LOL. Thanks for the props. Let me know if you need any advice, etc.

[danewilson77]

Epic day today with William (wsmeyer). Accomplished 4 sweet mods all at once, and kinda related. Originally we were just going to do the paddle shift mod but that morphed into other stuff. Please excuse yet more poor cell phone pics.

1st - installed paddle shifter mod that Ryan sold me. Absolutely love it. That, along with the Dinan STEP shift s/w makes the car shift much quicker. It's way more fun to drive, the paddles feel great, and it was very straightforward thanks to Ryan (whitexi) essentially selling me his whole setup. It seems like a different car and the STEP M mode (manual) is no longer an albatross. Some pics.







2nd - while in there, we moved the Parrot Bluetooth mic from up above in the reading lights area w/o good voice pickup to the OEM mic location that's on the steering wheel column. This involved a little re-routing and then a cut/splice/switch of the OEM mic to the Parrot mic.







Overview shot.



3rd - While the center shift boot, etc was out, we did the (vert only) individual windows auto-up, auto-down mod which is essentially taking off a clip and programming the car for it.


4th - While programming, William also set the top for "keyfob close". You could hold the unlock button and the top would lower remotely, but you couldn't close it that way. Now, you hold the lock button and the top will close.





Thanks to William for his expertise and again to Ryan for selling me his setup.

EDIT: pic of completed work.

Johnny, we're you going to post something in the diy forum regarding this mod?

Williamsburg, VA, Droid DNA, Tapatalk

[WOLFN8TR]

Wow awesome work guys!

[johnrando]

Thanks Gary. Dane, which mod were you thinking of a DIY on? Car update: Got some new (or new to me) interior pieces that I'll be installing soon. Wheel sent to be leather wrapped, should be some good updates soon.

[danewilson77]

Thanks Gary. Dane, which mod were you thinking of a DIY on? Car update: Got some new (or new to me) interior pieces that I'll be installing soon. Wheel sent to be leather wrapped, should be some good updates soon.

Paddle shifters.

Williamsburg, VA, Droid DNA, Tapatalk

[wsmeyer]

Paddle shifters.

Williamsburg, VA, Droid DNA, Tapatalk

We didn't do a DIY on the paddle shifters as Rando bought the wheel from Ryan (whitexi) and he's the one that made the wiring jumper to make it work. He documented the process in a DIY here on the site so maybe we should find it and link back to that.

We did take pics of retrofitting the Parrot mic into the stock housing and can do a DIY for that.


**** EDIT ********

I went back and looked and he didn't do a DIY either as he followed this DIY:

http://www.e46fanatics.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=826971

Except instead of soldiering the wires onto the stock harness he made a jumper to go between the existing connectors. IMO, this a much better solution so I'm going to try and find the connectors he use on Amazon.com and hopefully post again with a link.

[danewilson77]

We didn't do a DIY on the paddle shifters as Rando bought the wheel from Ryan (whitexi) and he's the one that made the wiring jumper to make it work. He documented the process in a DIY here on the site so maybe we should find it and link back to that.

We did take pics of retrofitting the Parrot mic into the stock housing and can do a DIY for that.

Ok. Thanks.

Williamsburg, VA, Droid DNA, Tapatalk

[johnrando]

Update to my steering wheel/SMG swap. So I swapped out the OEM paddle shifters with longer, metallic black ones, and William and I had our steering wheels re-wrapped in leather/tri-stitch/extra-thick, with the ZHP overall pattern mimicked. I like the wheel, but I think extra thick might take some getting used to. Also, it's funny with the new leather, I was worried that it didn't feel right, but William assured me that his X wheel had the same feel until it was broken in. So, all-in-all it's so far, so good. I'll have to see how I feel about the thick wheel. Some pics:

Wheel with the new shifters:



Close up of the tri-stitch - done really well.

[Pip]

Looks nice. It does look pretty thick, but I'm sure you'll get used to it.