[bshambam]

I have the grounding plate on the rear passenger side and it's empty except for one slot. Now i know it is for the amp as well as the cd changer. BMW offers so much!

[xlr88r]

Originally Posted by M-technik-3

Yeah it's a SE, wished there was more E91's in local scrappers but they are unloved in N.A. When I would travel through UK with USAF I was amazed at how many Touring's one would see. I was not into them so shame on me, I was feeding my E30 parts stash then. Wished I had grabbed a few E91 parts.

Whoa! That's quite the career - sure beats 20 odd years of desk based IT for me. Thank you for your service.

Feeding an E30 stash should surely take precedence - they're lovely cars! Which one do you have?

Mmm, we're a little lucky with Tourings here, although finding well specced 6-cylinder cars can take some patience. So many were bought as fleet cars, meaning 2.0 diesels with little in the way of options are ever so common. On and off I'd been looking for about 6 months or so before I found this, and while it looks alright on a mobile or laptop screen, it does need some TLC in places. Slowly getting there though!

[xlr88r]

Originally Posted by bshambam

I have the grounding plate on the rear passenger side and it's empty except for one slot. Now i know it is for the amp as well as the cd changer. BMW offers so much!

Aye, there are certainly lots of different boxes-of-tricks which can make their way into the boot of these, depending on the options chosen. Makes me wonder just how much the kerb weight would change when you add electric seats, the better stereos, pan roof and so on. Bet it adds up!

[xlr88r]

As much as it would've been nice to just remove and replace, the new interior had clearly seen some family life - it was filthy!

First up for some TLC were the carpets, as they'd be one of the first things to go back into the car. They had a vacuum to start, then a good douse of Meguiars Carpet cleaner, scrubbed in with a hand brush, and another vacuum to finish. They came up pretty well I think, and for a few days smelled nice as well - always a bonus when working inside the car.

[xlr88r]

Happily, I don't appear to have caught any bizarre tropical diseases or infections after cleaning up the CIC controller. Yuck!

[xlr88r]

More cleaning photos.

Hold on to your hats, people!

This really will be the most thrilling, nail biting, edge-of-your-seat build thread out there. Insert lol emoji here.

So, following suit completely, the seats themselves were an absolute state as well. Sticking to what I know, these got a really good going over with some Meguiars and - honestly - half a dozen microfiber cloths. Happily they came up really well, and under the muck there weren't any real scuffs in the leather, or any deeply ingrained stains or permanent marks. The impressions from the child seat frames have now eased out, thankfully, and the rear seats are looking fairly fresh.

Here are some before and after pics of the rear seats. Talk about 50 Shades of Brown!

[xlr88r]

Sorry to disappoint, but this isn't another cleaning related post. Wipe away those tears and stick with me though - it's worth it... at a push!

With the rear seats ready to go in, I was thinking door cards next. Truthfully, this was because the front seats were going to be a real pain. My car has M Sport seats (being an M Sport, that made sense) and they are fully electric, heated, memory ones, with lumbar and bolster support as well. The donor seats were basic, manually adjustable, non-heated, SE ones. I didn't want to surrender the functionality of mine, but the prospect of properly recolouring the original ones was filling me full of dread.

As such, it was door card time. To delay the front seat quandary a little more, I decided to mod the door cards a little, by removing the foam between the outer metal speaker grille and inner plastic frame. It's a tiny little thing really, but it does show off the aluminium HK speakers a bit more.

Kinda cool I think, albeit virtually undetectable to the unfamiliar. Here are some pics showing the 'hidden' and 'visible' speakers:

[xlr88r]

So, with a bottle of Meguiars Interior cleaner and half a dozen microfiber cloths surrendered to the cleaning gods, it was time to start the actual fitting.

With the boot/trunk being the last area I tackled on the breaker, it was there I started the refit as it was most fresh in my mind. It takes time, but is really logical to do. If you take out the left panel which hides the toolkit and CD changer, you then see a couple of push-fit fasteners. When they're taken out, another bit of trim is freed up. That in turn exposes a couple of screw heads, which, when removed, really start to strip the panels away.

It's like big, expensive Lego really, and is both pleasing and methodical to work on, even for a complete novice like me. Here are some pics of the boot stripped and refitted, with the rear seat in place too:

[xlr88r]

At this kind of point I'd made the decision to recolour the front seats. For love nor money, "well specced" Saddle Brown seats just do not come up for sale, and I'd hate to lose the heating and adjustability of the original ones, so recolouring it is. Yikes! As you'll see in a couple of posts time, this was a massive, time consuming, chemical heavy process. The results are decent though, and I'm pleased with how they came out.

For the time being though, lets keep with the timeline. With the boot and the rear seats refitted, it was time to work a bit further towards the front of the car. The front seats came out easily - just 4 bolts each, and a single, nicely designed connector.

Here are some photos of the strip-down, and a photo of the rear seats in place. It was at this stage I knew I'd made the right colour choice - Saddle Brown FTW!

[xlr88r]

Seats out. Good good! They're heavy things and a bit tricky to manoeuvre, but draping the front door mat (for the house!) over the sills meant I could rest them there without scratching any paint.

With those out of the way, the center console was next. That was a lot trickier to remove as there are a surprising amount of modules and wiring looms running inside, connected to the various amenities - shift indicators, aux in, rear temperature control, phone dock and so on. With those all disconnected it was then a pig to wrestle over the handbrake (emergency brake). Being a purely mechanical item I didn't want to touch the bolts for this, in case the car would then decide to roll off! Some grunting, a grazed knuckle, and countless useless YouTube videos later, it was out.

The front carpet quickly followed it, albeit I took that out in two halves. The front carpet is actually fitted before the dash goes in, and there's no way I'm brave enough to tackle a dash swap!

Anyway, here's the console and front carpet coming out:

[lownoma]

absolutely enjoying this thread!

[bkwld]

Loving this! I have the similar opposite situation to your front seat situation. Wondering if you thought about exchanging just the seat covers. Dye option is good too. You will have refreshed seats.

[Tambohamilton]

There's no way I'd swap sport seats to base seats, regardless of options or colour. Dye was definitely the only way for this!

[bkwld]

Oh I see. I thought the donor seat was sport.
Sport seat is a must!

[xlr88r]

Originally Posted by lownoma

absolutely enjoying this thread!

Thanks so much! This was easily the biggest car related job I've ever tackled, so I went snap happy and took loads of photos along the way. More to come :-)

Originally Posted by bkwld

Loving this! I have the similar opposite situation to your front seat situation. Wondering if you thought about exchanging just the seat covers. Dye option is good too. You will have refreshed seats.

Funnily enough I did wonder about swapping the covers over for a short time as well, but the larger M Sport bolsters and thigh supports/leg extenders put that plan to bed. Recolouring it is...! :-S

Originally Posted by Tambohamilton

There's no way I'd swap sport seats to base seats, regardless of options or colour. Dye was definitely the only way for this!

Absolutely! I'm glad I took it on, but as you'll see it was a massive job and pretty daunting too. Looking back, I'd happily swap an interior again, but recolouring seats again? No way!

[xlr88r]

A big thanks to all those who've commented so far. For everyone who's scrolled through and wondered "When is anything exciting going to happen?", well, here we go.

With most of the interior now empty, it was time to start the refit. In the course of a day the remaining original carpets and lower cabin plastics came out, and the new carpets and door cards went in. This was a good day, because looking back at the rear seats gave a really good impression of how it was going to look when finished.

Without further ado:









Much better!

[xlr88r]

In exactly the same vein as the front seats, the dashboard was giving me mild - well, massive - headaches.

After a few days of deliberation I was just about set on recolouring the lower dash. Glovebox covers, cup holder trims, climate trims, and the drivers storage compartment are all readily available in black, meaning there wouldn't be much to actually paint or dye. Elsewhere on the internet I'd posted a few pics of the progress so far and, surprise surprise, quite a few people had encouraged me to just crack on and swap the dashboard as well.

"It's really easy M9".
"You've done the hard work".
"There are only a few Torx bolts".
"Honestly it's a 10 minute job".

You know the score.

Gulp.

This filled me with dread and I was really resistant to the idea. Some Googling around saw me arrive at this page however, which has an incredibly thorough Navigation Retrofit guide... including the dash swap.

https://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8127138

This was my spare time reading for a couple of days while I debated what to do with this:

[xlr88r]

This arrived.

Talk about comprehensive! Many cleaning steps. Many prep steps. Many colouring steps. Many finishing steps. This won't be a quick job in the slightest.

[xlr88r]

Let's have a go at seeing if I can make left look like right. Go go go! Well, prep prep prep really!

[xlr88r]

First up was removing/freeing up any non-leather bits. The more I can prep, paint, and protect without working around masking tape the better. Just in case anyone wonders what the inside of a well specced seat looks like, here we go:

[xlr88r]

Step 1
----------
A really good clean. I used a slightly more aggressive Sonax interior cleaner with a microfiber cloth.

[xlr88r]

Step 2
----------
This was the 'gassiest' step. For some reason, the same day I was doing this was the same day the UK decided to be unseasonally hot, with the living room thermostat showing 29c at about 3pm. As always with the UK when it's hot, there was no breeze whatsoever. This stage left me as high as a kite!