With today's technology, everyone loves the flexibility of being able to
wirelessly charge the devices at home. Well, we now have a brand new wireless
charger available for 2016 and up BMW 3 and 4 series vehicles with a
center console exactly like this one, with a sliding cover atop the cupholders.
If you happen to have a 2015 or older with a center console like this, it's
still possible to retrofit our charger if you replace the old center console
trim piece with a 2016 version, otherwise the charger won't fit This F30 is a 2014
model, and as you'll see in a second, the new console is a drop-in replacement. We
listed the part number in the description. We got this one used for an
affordable $50, and today, I'm going to show you guys how to install both the
trim and the wireless charger. It's the perfect add-on with your Wireless
CarPlay, so stick around for this drop-in plug and play tutorial.
And here it is ladies and gentlemen: Bimmer-Tech's wireless charger. When you open
the box you're greeted by the wireless charger itself.
Pulling it out of the box
the wireless charger itself has a very nice OEM plug-and-play feel to it.
It comes with a removable silicon mat that grips your phone, that can also be set
aside since its near cupholders, and if you happen to have any drinks spilling
around, it makes for an easy cleanup. Flipping it around you can see the power
supply cable. Moving right along, inside the box you also see the
plug-and-play harness jumper, which comes equipped with an inline fuse. Next, you'll
see a supplied file that we highly recommend using to cut small grooves and
at the bottom side of the corner of the console trim in order to make room for
the chargers power cable. Last but not least, you have a little pamphlet with
some information for you to read.
Here's a list of tools that we recommend for
this install. Definitely grab your Bimmer-Tech trim removal tools, as it'll protect
your surfaces from marring up.
So to get things rolling, the first thing we want
to do is remove the negative terminal on your battery. Something you want to keep
in mind whenever you're working on any electrical components on your vehicle.
Go ahead and grab yourself a 10mm deep socket.
We're going to loosen the terminal and then carefully pull it off.
Once that's done, you're going to want to grab a shop rag and tie it onto the
trunk latch so you don't lock yourself out of the trunk. That is unless you're
comfortable climbing to the backseat to reconnect your battery later. ;)
Moving Into the interior of the vehicle, let's start by removing this piece of trim with the
iDrive controller, with our Bimmer-Tech trim removal tool. Lifting up the armrest to
give us more space just start prying underneath, wiggling back and forth until
it comes loose, and then pry it up.
Once it's loose enough, simply pull up, turn it around, and unplug the iDrive contorller.
We'll set that aside for later. Next, we'll remove this T20 Torx screw.
Then, we'll pry out the surrounding trim around the shift knob. Simply grab your
pry tool, press in firmly, and lift up.
We'll set that aside. Remove the drive mode buttons by hooking around
underneath towards the back of the button pressing in a tab that will
release it from its position.
Then turn it around, and unplug the cable from the back by pinching the connector and pulling it out.
Then, let's remove the last T20 Torx screw that's holding the trim in place.
Here are the different points where the clips that are holding
the trim piece in place need to be pried up. You can use your hands or the pry
tool to pull it up carefully. Don't be alarmed if you hear some loud popping
sounds. That's just the sound of the clips being released. Once it's loose
enough, carefully pry away from the shift knob
as not to scratch the surface. Pull towards you and then lift up carefully.
You'll notice the cables that are plugged in. Simply pull them out.
The white clip needs to be pinched in order to be released.
Once those wires are removed, we're ready to move on to modifying the new trim
piece to put in place. Here's the updated LCI trim piece. We'll be removing this
rubber tray. You can see it has a sliding cover for the cup holders.
Further examination shows us that when it slides open and closed, we need to
make sure that no wires will be pinched when we install the wireless charger.
To remove the rubber tray, if you close the door and you flip it around you can see
there's a little hole that you can stick your finger through to push out the
rubber trim.
If your finger doesn't fit, grab a screwdriver.
Next, we'll do a dry fit with
the wireless charger making sure that we don't snap it permanently into place.
Here's the pinching we're trying to prevent.
Let's remove the silicone mat and set that aside.
You can see the four points where it snaps into place. Without permanently
snapping the wireless charger into place, we'll pull back our cable, and we'll make
sure the cupholder door's in the open position, and grab our file, and mark the
location where we'll be filing away plastic to create a resting channel for the cable to rest.
You'll see there's a slight groove on the door that lets the
wire have a little bit more room to wiggle. Go ahead and mark your filing
point, and start filing the plastic away allowing for just enough space for the
wire to sit flush with the plastic. With markings in place, we'll set the charger aside.
You can now begin to start filing the plastic away making sure to
periodically check and see if the cable has enough room once it's installed.
A quick tip: if you use the sharp edge to mark the center line, it'll give you a
groove to then turn it sideways and start filing it flat.
When I feel like I'm getting close to what I want, I'll go ahead and I'll do a
dry fit to make sure I'm not pulling away too much plastic. In this situation
I'm going to have to keep going.
And I think we're just about there!
Fitting it into place, I can see that the door has plenty of room to open and
close, so we'll go ahead and snap it into place.
Simply apply pressure until you hear it snap.
Before applying glue to the cable,
we'll tape it in a position that we feel comfortable to allow the door to open
and close comfortably. Just follow along with me. :)
Next, we'll bend the cable underneath this clip so it's out of the way when we
put the panel back in.
Now, we'll loop it around the side and tape it down, and get ready to start gluing.
Looks like we're ready to glue. With a cable in this
position, it'll be out of the way and sit snugly
when we install the trim back in. We'll carefully peel back the tape, and start applying our glue.
We'll hold the cable down for about 10 seconds to allow to grip.
Then we'll set it down and let it harden for 10 minutes.
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Okay... Now we'll pull out the tape, and make sure it's secure.
The cable's secure,
and it's not going anywhere. Other than a little tape residue, I'd say it looks pretty good.
Now we'll install the plug-and-play harness.
The side without the foam protector is the side that plugs into the trim panel.
And the black connector plugs into the wireless charger.
Now, we're good to go and install
the panel back into the car. Working in reverse,
we'll start by plugging in the OEM harness into the panel.
When we put the trim panel back in, the blue connector for the buttons will have to be pulled through.
Let's go ahead and plug in the main power supply cable.
Then, we'll plug in the little black connector.
With that done, we'll make sure
to push the cables back into the empty space behind the cupholders, and we'll
pull through the blue connector as well. Then we can snap the panel into place.
The trim panel is a perfect fit, and the cupholder cover also slides freely.
Continuing to work in reverse order, let's go ahead and put all the pieces
back into place. Just continue to follow along! :)
Everything's back in place, and it looks great. Last but not least, we'll put our
silicon mat in place to make sure our devices don't slide around.
Let's go ahead and reconnect the battery so we can test it out.
Let's start this car up and see how it works. There'll be a blue LED indicating
that it's receiving power. Just center your device, and it will start charging
immediately. A green LED will turn on to indicate that it's starting to charge,
and for more information about this device, go ahead and check out the links
in the description, and check out the blog post that we made about it.
Once again guys, my name is Chaz. Thanks for sticking around and watching this video.
If you happen to have any questions, let us know in the comments, and don't forget
to subscribe to see the latest videos that we got here at the shop. See you next time!