[speeddeacon]

Well, after a long wait, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered the F20 M-sport steering wheel with paddle shifters for our 2013 F30 335i Sport Line with sport auto. I ordered it from partsale.eu mentioned above. It took about 5 weeks to arrive as it got caught up in customs due to an "inadequate description" of the package contents. Then it took me another few weeks to have the uninterrupted time to tackle the job. When I get time, I'll try to figure out how to post some pictures since my install had both paddle shifters and active blind spot vibration in the steering wheel. By the way, you will pay duties to FedEx on the part, mine was just under $20.

The install went without a hitch. I had no problem getting the airbag out using the screwdriver method. It came off with no issues. The hardest part physically, was getting the white airbag connector and the two blue paddle shifter connectors apart. There are no retention clips on them, like on the main airbag and switchgear connectors, just an oh so slightly raised tab that keeps the two pieces together and it took a very strong pull to get them apart. Of course I was being very careful trying not to break any wiring since it is all reused. Once those three connectors were disconnected, the rest was easy.

Of note, on the inside of my wheel, there is a flat relay that sits in the 5 O'clock position that is not found in pcbrew's photos. Three things plug into this relay, the vibration actuator, the switchgear, and, from what I can tell, possibly heated steering wheel wires. I don't have heated steering but from what I can gather my wheel has the element it just doesn't have the switch and wiring. The F20 wheel doesn't have these wires and this worried me at first because I thought this might have something to do with the vibration and would throw a fault with the active blind spot function, which my wife really likes. After the install, however, the vibration functioned perfectly and no faults were thrown.

The wheel goes back on just as described and when I reconnected the battery and started the car, the only fault I had was to "set time/date" from the battery being disconnected. The faults for steering realignment, low battery, etc., that some have experienced, didn't occur for me.

When I took it out for the first test drive, I was very relieved that the auto blind spot function worked perfectly, "whew"! However, none of the multifunction switches worked. Ugh! A quick search of this forum and Google, turned up nothing, so I had no choice but to go back in to check for loose connectors. Once again, the airbag came right off and upon examination, there was a connector dangling loose that I had missed. So I connected it, reinstalled the airbag and reconnected the battery and voila!, everything works perfectly.

So, I will try to post some pix to point out the differences of mine versus pcbrew's as mentioned above.

Thanks to pcbrew, and everyone else to has done the swap for the great write up, part numbers, resources and feedback. It is a night and day difference and improvement!