Ok so now it is all finished, here is what I did!
I apologise but I got so heavily involved that I forgot to take pictures.
First, I removed the earth to the battery, and waited for the static to discharge.
Next, I removed the steering wheel and shrouding wheel as usual (pop the airbag from behind, uncouple connectors and remove 17mm retaining bolt)
As my steering wheel controls never worked, and I didn’t have the M3 slip ring, I decided to use the contacts that would normally do the aforementioned controls. So this was the tricky part: getting the signal from the paddles through to behind the centre console.
I started by removing the slip ring and unconnected the rear connector that takes all the steering wheel information back to the car, then using my multimeter carefully belled out the four small pins at the front of the slip ring to the back conector of the slip ring. Then I carefully dissassembled the rear connector plug, removed the two wires I had identified, and removed the bullet connectors.
Next, I soldered the ends of two cores from some 8core alarm cable to the bullets, then carefully re-fitted them to the connector and reassembled the outer assembly.
With this connector back in place place, I belled out the front pins of the slip ring to the two ends of my 8core, and the result was good J I had my contacts.
Next I had to splice the two wires from the steering wheel paddles into the small connector cable for the now redundant steering wheel controls. This was fairly straightforward, using some solder and insulation tape (I had no heatshrink available)
Now the acid test. I connected the wheel back up to the car, found a good ground for one of the prongs on my meter, then connected the other to the end of the cable I had put in, and pulled a paddle……….. And it only bloody worked!!! So I fully reassembled the wheel assembly. Now it was time to concentrate on the gearstick area….
Upon pulling apart the leather gaitor, and unscrewing the window control surround, I quickly identified the four wire connector that carried the gear up/down information (pins two and three carry the signals that I need to splice into), and also even quicker realised that splicing this was not an option due to how short the cable was. So I dug out an old cd-rom audio cable, and a universal ten pin adaptor cable, and made up a four cable jumper lead, while splicing in two extra wires for my gear selector.
Next, I connected the jumper wire between the four pin cable, and connected in the paddles to the flying leads I had spliced in, and started the car.
I pulled into sports mode, pulled down for a gear, but it went up, and vice versa from the other paddle. So a quick ‘pitstop’ to swap the polarity over on my cable from the paddles, and I tried it again. AND IT WORKED!!!!! Fully functional paddle shift.
To say I was happy would be an understatement. And to think that I have now got the full paddle shift conversion done for only £165 and a bit of head scrathing makes me even more pleased.
Hope this helps some of you, if anyone has any questions, then feel free to ask.
Over and out
Paul