Dashboard update

When I was searching for the best deal before buying my car (those 2-3 years of dreaming actually) I have created a picture of what the perfect configuration would look like (both exterior and interior colors and equipment). Of course when I actually gathered enough money to buy the car, I had a small window of choosing and buying one from the used car market. Naturally the first criteria was mileage, equipment, condition and last but not least: price. I have tried to choose one which had the closest match to the exterior/interior configuration I dreamed about. I have nailed the exterior and I managed to find one which had a pretty close match for the interior also. Pretty close, but not the aluminum-like trim I really dreamed about:
E46_Trim

After a year of driving it like that, I came across an interesting article on the internet showing how this trim can be changed. The links on the thumbnails do not work, because it is a pretty old post, however I managed to find them looking at the source code of the web-site 😀 . I have quickly looked up an online BMW Part Catalog for the exact parts that I would need. The trim-type I was looking for, was the one code-named TITAN II trim (it is plastic but looks aluminum). The next step was to ask for the same parts at one of the local car-parts dealer. After this, things went fast: ordered, shipped (in 4 days!), ready to be installed 🙂 .

So this Saturday morning was dedicated to the trim-change activity. I memorized the guidelines I have seen in the article, went down to the car and did this to the poor thing:
E46 no interior trim
Yeeees it is ugly, BUT: I had my brand new original, factory made TITAN II trims on stand-by next to me on the seats. So basically within a few minutes my car interior got really close to the interior I always dreamed of:
E46 TITAN II interior trim
Of course the trimming is not limited to the dash only: I had to change the side-trims also on all 4 doors. The whole idea of my little experiment was to see how hard is the work of the BMW mechanics at the local dealership which for sure would have skinned me alive for this small work, just cause their mechanics have a BMW badge on their clothes. The whole trim-change operation took much less than I expected: in 40 minutes I changed all the trimming, without any problems (of course the tutorial was GOLD!, couldn’t have done it without it).

So what is missing? My TITAN II decor-trim on the steering wheel (the lower forks). I looked it up, they have it… but first I have some brake-maintenance to get through…

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One Response to “Dashboard update”

  1. Kata says:

    ha már bmw, akkor itt egy szám vele és talán bele is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6G6zWwr-mQ