interior swap questions

[Morgenster]

Tomorrow I'm going to take a look at an '89 e34 without engine to see if I can salvage some parts. More specifically I'm planning to swap the interior from grey cloth (mine) to beige leather (donor).

And then the usual like steering wheel, rims, electrical windows, etc. How hard is life going to be attempting all this transplanting? I'm looking for some how-to advice as well as cautions.
Like: are the electricals superhard? I get the impression most of the wiring is already there and unused. Am I right? Especially curious about wiring for electrical seats/windows (cause mine has none of that).

I would like to find the thread about an interior swap that had pictures and everything where the poster also refurbished the headliner (mine's sagging).
I'm thinking this would take me a week. Does this make me an optimist or a pessimist?

[Morgenster]

Hmm. bump?

[Uber Soldat]

I did an interior swap awhile ago. We swaped a black interior into my '92 520i and was able to fit some extra electrical goodies.

Here is a link to the thread i posted:
http://www.bimmer.info/forum/showthread.php?t=23181

Hope it helps. Im sure shogun could chime in about the electrics your wanting to fit.

[RobPatt]

just time and a lot of patience...

- What about the carpet?
- What about the dash? that'd be some work. There's a european e32 site where I think they swapped a dash... ( look for Shogun's posts... his website has a link to theirs... )
- It'd help to get and salvage all the little plastic clips you can from both cars, you'll need them.
- You should have the wiring in place for electric seats.
- Can't say about the windows....

Let us know how it goes!
Cheers,
Rob sends....



Tomorrow I'm going to take a look at an '89 e34 without engine to see if I can salvage some parts. More specifically I'm planning to swap the interior from grey cloth (mine) to beige leather (donor).

And then the usual like steering wheel, rims, electrical windows, etc. How hard is life going to be attempting all this transplanting? I'm looking for some how-to advice as well as cautions.
Like: are the electricals superhard? I get the impression most of the wiring is already there and unused. Am I right? Especially curious about wiring for electrical seats/windows (cause mine has none of that).

I would like to find the thread about an interior swap that had pictures and everything where the poster also refurbished the headliner (mine's sagging).
I'm thinking this would take me a week. Does this make me an optimist or a pessimist?

[shogun]

Well, the above link is probably enough for you to see what you have to do.
Take whatever you can get from the other car, never too many parts one can stock.
Headliner change is on my website, procedures have been posted several times. I also once posted a japanese website where they show all the clips etc.
But that is actually less complicated than it looks.

[Morgenster]

I did an interior swap awhile ago. We swaped a black interior into my '92 520i and was able to fit some extra electrical goodies.

Here is a link to the thread i posted:
http://www.bimmer.info/forum/showthread.php?t=23181

Hope it helps. Im sure shogun could chime in about the electrics your wanting to fit.

That's the thread I was looking for! Thanks! So one week isn't that pessimistic. I'm probably keeping the carpet unless one of the two donor cars has something better. If one of them had aico I might consider transplanting that while I'm at it.

[Morgenster]

Well, the above link is probably enough for you to see what you have to do.
Take whatever you can get from the other car, never too many parts one can stock.
Headliner change is on my website, procedures have been posted several times. I also once posted a japanese website where they show all the clips etc.
But that is actually less complicated than it looks.

What about the electrical windows?

[BuckNaked]

I have been saving this link since I noticed my headliner is failing...
http://www.wlsheadliners.com/tutorials/bmw/
I hope it helps.
Remember, projects like the one you want to take on need to be documented, lotsa pics for us novice goofballs with a lot of ambition and very little know-how.

[e34.535i.sport]

I done a transplant from grey cloth to black leather recently including the centre console and glove box etc - two points of advice:

1. When looking for donor - make sure the glove box is the same shape exactly - some are a slightly different shape (auto - manual i think!)!!!

2. When trying to remove old centre console/put new one in, pull the handbrake up really high - make life MUCH easier!

Good luck...

[e34.535i.sport]

P.s I hear the wiring for electric seats is there in all e34 ready to plug and play - under the carpet?

[Morgenster]

Well I took a look at car number 1 and made an offer.
The seats aren't electrical, but that's not really a problem. I don't think there's much of a difference in pressing or pulling a small lever or pushing a button. It's less hassle. And the seats are in good shape (way better than mine: they're starting to tear). It's the electrics for the windows that I worry about.

I'm going to use the seats, rims (original basketweaves) and the M-tech leatherbound steering wheel. The car has intact green body parts, an M20 block (broken though) and an intact diff and tranny. Maybe I'll do as Shogun suggests and strip the car of anything of value. I might even make a profit :D.

Car number 2 I still have to look at but that one would serve mainly for body parts because my doors have taken a beating over the years.

One thing though, car number 1 had some sort of vertical rollswitch below the dash on the right that mine doesn't have and I can't figure out what it serves. It's marked with two pictograms resembling a fat T topside and the same symbol upside down underside. Anyone know what this is?

[Morgenster]

I finally bought car number one and I'm scheduling the first week of august to do the restoring/swap. I'd still like to know if the wiring for electrical windows is going to be a BIG problem. any ideas?

[Morgenster]

Well the windows are controlled by the black boxes under the back seat... So if your car never had them, you might need new black boxes, and a whole lot of wiring. If you're lucky, everything might be in place. E34's are wonderful for pre-wiring. I'd say if you have wiring for the switches and motors, it could be plug and play.

Well I could always try to scavenge the wiring in the donor car. There's definitely a bunch of black boxes under the rear seat of my car. I'll see what happens. The only thing that worries me is the complexity of wiring these switches and motors.
If I'm taking out most of the interior and the carpet it'd still be easy to put in wires myself, but I'd need to know if there's any separate control units, fuses, etc. that are normally in the loop that I might overlook in the proces. Somehow I don't think it's as simple as hooking up a light switch. I'm no electrician, but I know some electricity so it's a challenge.

[Morgenster]

come to think of it. Anyoen have decent wiring diagrams for windows? The ones I have are illegible.

[skr]

your car has the "LOW" rm(relay module). you nead the "HIGH" version. all the wiering is there, waiting for. the RM is under the rear seat, one of the two big modules.

[Morgenster]

your car has the "LOW" rm(relay module). you nead the "HIGH" version. all the wiering is there, waiting for. the RM is under the rear seat, one of the two big modules.

Think I can just swap the high RM from the donor car into mine then?

[skr]

yes. that's wht i did. my car had the low RM, wich couldn't control windows,sunroof and probably electric seats. after i put everything together windows still didn't work. after a lot of studying the diagrams (thanks dave voorhis) i figured it's the RM. fortunatly it's a straight swap, pull the old one, plug in the new one. if u want the diagrams they are on dave's site.

[DaveVoorhis]

Wiring diagrams are here: http://shark.armchair.mb.ca/~dave/BMW

[Morgenster]

Supercool! Now I just hope the fact that my car's a 91 and the donor's a 89 doesn't screw things up for me. Megathanks!

[Morgenster]

OK. So far I've dismantled most of the interior from the donor car and cleaned and stored it :D . In three weeks I'm going to attack mine and do the swap. It took me one day by myself to remove all seats, panels, steering wheel, center console and rear seat belts and some trim. Cleaning all of it thoroughly and treating the leather to a wash and conditioning took the longest time.

Now, before I go forward I need some additional info on which the bentley isn't too clear:

- the door window motors: can they be removed separately or do I need to get the whole assembly out including the window as the manual states? Also they seem to be riveted, which can be dealt with but seems a bit of a pain. Any tips on that?
I tried swapping my battery to the donor car but couldn't get the electricals to work and if I need to get the whole assembly out what can I do to get the windows down?

- The wheels (which I want) are bolted on with an anti-theft bolt for every wheel and guess what: the PO didn't have the keys. How do I remove those locks safely?

When I go at it three weeks from now I'll make sure to take plenty of pictures so there's some future reference for others ;) .
Many thanks!

[Morgenster]

bump? :(

[Morgenster]

yes. that's wht i did. my car had the low RM, wich couldn't control windows,sunroof and probably electric seats. after i put everything together windows still didn't work. after a lot of studying the diagrams (thanks dave voorhis) i figured it's the RM. fortunatly it's a straight swap, pull the old one, plug in the new one. if u want the diagrams they are on dave's site.

How did you remove the motor assemblies? Bentley says to remove including window. Or can I get away with just swapping the motors?

[Morgenster]

Also, more of a question for Shogun: I'm going to try to find headliner fabric and glue locally. Any criteria it should live up to. It seems as if you can't just use any type of cloth to reupholster those panels and I'm curious about what makes headliner cloth 'headliner cloth'. Same goes for the glue that needs to be used.

[Spice Boy]

If it helps.. I managed to do a complete interior swap, on my own from full cloth to full leather, in less than a day :) so if you get stuck then feel free to give me a holler and ill help out best i can :)

BMWs are seriously easy to work on, wouldn't surprise me if your car is pre-wired for leccy windows and all you will have to do is place all the required parts into the correct locations :)

[skr]

-door window motors : Drill out the rivets and intall screws for the new motor assembly. You don't have to remove the window. the window is held with 2 plastic things on rails. to remove the 2 arms of the lifter fpom those plastic things u remove 2 clips and then pull on the lifter's arm. it will pop out. You do this confortably with the window down.

[Morgenster]

-door window motors : Drill out the rivets and intall screws for the new motor assembly. You don't have to remove the window. the window is held with 2 plastic things on rails. to remove the 2 arms of the lifter fpom those plastic things u remove 2 clips and then pull on the lifter's arm. it will pop out. You do this confortably with the window down.

So I would still have to lower the windows somehow manually? I could try just hooking up a battery to the motors to lower them or is that a bad idea?
I just found out I don't have the wiring in the doors yet I do have it in the center console area on the carpet???? The RM also has the german indication for the location of doorwindow electrics fuses on mine so I'm confused about wether or not the wiring is there. I could try to swap the harness connectors as well but this is becoming a bit of a hassle.
Anyway, I'm practically done removing the interior from my car. Just need to get the headliner out and it's proving a bit of a trial because I have a completely stuck manually operated sunroof.

Thanks for the tips!