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How To - Retrofit Cruise Control

97K views 176 replies 69 participants last post by  BFleming 
#1 ·
I've now completed the retrofit of Cruise Control to my 09 118d Sport Coupé. Not at all difficult - apologies for having no photos, but I had no camera with me when I did it!

I'd advise having the car booked in for the necessary coding before you start though.

You need (these are for my model, best check if yours needs the same!):

61319123040 - the complete steering column switch unit
61316950263 - the lower half of the steering column shroud
(You do NOT need the top half!)

I got them from a UK dealer with 10% off, and paid £297.20 + VAT and £16.92 + VAT respectively, but they'd be slightly cheaper ordering online at eshop.original-teile.de I think.

Disconnect the battery negative before you start!

Do all of this with the wheels in the straight ahead postion and do not move it.

Remove the airbag from the steering wheel using a flat-bladed screwdriver of about 5mm width; plenty instructions elsewhere on the forum on how to do that, and having read them, I found it easy - took about 2 minutes.

When it's loose, there are two cables plugged into it - disconnect them, by first lifting the black locking tabs up and away from the connector body (watch this part - at least some of the instructions elsewhere neglect to say that you have to lift the tabs first!) then the connectors pull straight out. That lets you set the airbag aside.

Disconnect the two connectors that you can see at the top of the wheel; again these have locking tabs, easy to see, though of a different sort - a small flat-bladed screwdriver will lift them.

Lock the steering column as far up towards your face, but down from the dash, as it will go.

Undo the 16mm bolt holding the wheel on. Note the mark at the bottom of the hole in the wheel next to the splines for lining it up correctly. Lift the wheel off.

Now you can remove the two halves of the plastic shroud round the steering column; there are no screws - they simply clip together. Take the top one off FIRST, leaving the bottom one in place for the moment! The best way I found to separate them is to place the sharp side of a new Stanley knife blade in the joint and twist it while gently pushing the top half of the housing upwards, doing one side at a time. The top half has a plastic bar with vinyl cloth attached at the bottom; the bar has four lugs that pass through the top half of the housing. Simply squeeze the lugs with your fingers and push them out (self explanatory when you see it!). Now remove the bottom half of the housing - it has two clips that go onto the switch unit, one on each side, so look for them and ease them back - having done that, it lifts away.

Remove the old switchgear; four T20 self tappers hold it on. Remove those, lift it up the column a little to allow you to disconnect the wiring plugs, then lift all the way off.

Replace with the new one, making sure it's seated properly before screwing in the four torx screws. Refit the two halves of the shroud, again self explantory, then the wheel and the wiring. I don't know the correct torque setting for the wheel, so I used my best judgement. Reconnect the airbag and clip it back in. Job done and time to reconnect the battery.

Now you best be aware - until you get this coded, your dash will be lit up like a Christmas tree with warning lights, DSC will not work, along with several other systems, the steering will not self-centre nicely, and your indicators will not self cancel. (Which is why I said have the coding appointment booked first!!) However, I found no difficulty in driving it like that.

Time to do the full thing? Half an hour.

Coding can be done as a total ripoff by your local BMW Stealer (ours charge £105 + VAT and hour, so they'll not see a penny of my money!) who'll probably claim it takes a couple of hours. I had mine done (I'm in central Scotland) by an Autologic dealer. It should take around 30 minutes start to finish, but it actually took an hour and a half, because although the Autologic tool has a selection for doing just a retrofit of the Cruise control, this did not work, despite doing it three times; in the end, it required all 15 (on my car) modules to be recoded, which worked no problem. Had the chap doing mine known that, as I say, it would have been a 30 minute job. Cost to me was an hour and a half at £39.50 + VAT an hour - £69.61, which is rather better than the BMW stealer would have charged!

All warning lights out, indicators self cancelling, steering as normal, Cruise Control now working as intended! :celebrate:

Hope this is of help to anybody who wants to do it!

Jim
 
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#152 ·
jose33 said:
hi, I´m new at the forum, and I was wondering if someone could help me.
I´m from Argentina and there are no many good forums like this in spanish, so please scuse me if I make some mistakes writing.
Well, I have this VIN number in my car PW36683; I wanted to add the multifunction steering wheel and the cruise control. I have checked in " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for the correct part for my car and they are the following part numbers 61 31 9123042 and 61 31 9123043. The thing is, I have found just this part 61 31 9123040 and is seems to work in some bmw 120i models.
Can I know for sure that It will work on my one, or you think is the same. I´m asking because I want to buy this part from a seller from the UK and is the only one He has.

Thanks, and great forum!!
Welcome Jose,
Take a look at to see what fits your car. The two part numbers you listed have different functions, so it is not clear what you have on your car (do you have automatic windscreen wipers with the Rain Sensor?). The third part you listed is not on the Real OEM page, so I would think it is not right for your car.

You can see which cars that fits at

Good luck.
 
#153 ·
After reading up a bit on this I am marginally confused, I have seen slip rings at various prices but the 1 series rings with cruise and rear wiper are super expensive.

Does anyone know if I bought a 3 series ring that had a normal wiper stalk (i.e no rear wiper function), could I remove the stalk and replace with my existing one? Is it plug and play?

I have spoken to a auto electrician and that have said they have all the computers BMW has and they would charge about £35

Many thanks in advance

BMW e81 57 120d msport
 
#154 ·
Hedgyboy said:
After reading up a bit on this I am marginally confused, I have seen slip rings at various prices but the 1 series rings with cruise and rear wiper are super expensive.

Does anyone know if I bought a 3 series ring that had a normal wiper stalk (i.e no rear wiper function), could I remove the stalk and replace with my existing one? Is it plug and play?

I have spoken to a auto electrician and that have said they have all the computers BMW has and they would charge about £35

Many thanks in advance

BMW e81 57 120d msport
As far as I'm aware you can't just plug a cruise stalk into your existing slip ring.
 
#156 ·
MNC8395 said:
Okay first post. Have read all the useful info especially that from Rob The Viking.

If my car has auto wipers but my new CC stalk does not, can I take the auto wiper stalk out of my car, put it in the new slip ring and will this mean that I keep the auto wiper function when it all goes back together?

Thanks
Hi
I've done it! My car has auto wipers but new slipring with cc didn't so I swap right stalk. Auto wipers works as designed except led does not turn on. I suspect need some coding but not sure what to code yet..

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#157 ·
Joe said:
Hedgyboy said:
After reading up a bit on this I am marginally confused, I have seen slip rings at various prices but the 1 series rings with cruise and rear wiper are super expensive.

Does anyone know if I bought a 3 series ring that had a normal wiper stalk (i.e no rear wiper function), could I remove the stalk and replace with my existing one? Is it plug and play?

I have spoken to a auto electrician and that have said they have all the computers BMW has and they would charge about £35

Many thanks in advance

BMW e81 57 120d msport
As far as I'm aware you can't just plug a cruise stalk into your existing slip ring.
That's correct, you can't plug cc stalk in to your original slipring print board as there is no connector and few elements missing. But you can try to swap your original wipers stalk in to new slipring. I play with it a lot and only found difference in flex cable of the wipers stalk. In my case there one extra line for LED in the cable which was missing in the stalk came with cc. Still not figured out how to make LES working (See above post)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#159 ·
hi there newbie here i have 04 120d just got e90 slip ring and stalks from car with mfsw and cruise from 07 after swapping to my e87 it didnt work... my car has no cruise and mfsw do i have wrong
parts

e87





e90





i did swap my stalk with rear wiper still no life ... just need someone to confirm that is possible to make this swap work or not ... if not will sell this set up and get correct one ... cheers

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#162 ·
firu1 said:
redwizard said:
The E90 (3 series saloon) does not have a rear wiper, the E91 (3 series touring) does.
thanks redwizard does the coding can fixed that if i swap my stalk into the ring from e90 ?
Sorry, I just don't know if an E90 ring can be made to work on an E87, hopefully someone else will.
 
#166 ·
Hi,

First post on here. :celebrate:

I've just picked up a 130i - it's fantastic. However, on the way home from collecting I got to the motorway, and started looking around for the cruise control buttons... I've owned a couple of E39s and E46s before and these had cruise as standard, so assumed a Sport-spec E87 would too. Evidently not.

Anyway, I've now bought (what I think are) the correct cruise control stalks/slip ring off eBay. A bit pricey at £190 but it was the only one for sale for auto wiper cars and with the replacement steering column shroud.

I'm now looking for someone to fit and code it for me. Obviously I'm prepared to pay for the privilege, but I was just wondering if there was anyone in North London, Herfordshire or Bristol (or anywhere in the south in England if need be!) who had the wherewithal to do this?

Thanks in advance.
 
#167 ·
I could probably help you fit the parts as I did mine but you need to be 100% it's correct slip ring otherwise it's a ball ache.

Coding would need to be done via Wibbles and remote access via a OBD D Can cable.

Here's what I followed -
* Side note that should be added to this guide - if you have an E82 and disconnect the neutral off the battery DO NOT CLOSE THE BOOT. There's no key hole. You can't get back in without jump starting the live terminal under the bonnet and putting power to release the boot latch.

Ask me how I know this.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#168 ·
I am in Bristol and just did the cruise control retrofit on my 2005 116i. I used Nigel at Castle Performance (). He did a great job. Hit some snags as often happens when programming but he worked through it all and had the car all done in about 1.5hrs. Fitting the hardware took me about 1.5hrs too. The Cruise control works great, why didn't I do this earlier?
 
#169 ·
I retrofit cruisecontrol lastweek, and code it using my indy maxsys, it succeed but there are no cruise control icon on speedometer, i tried and the cruise control worked! But there are no icon about cruisecontrol at all on the speedo
My car is e87 120i, does anyone know what happened?
 
#170 ·
Adejul45 said:
I retrofit cruisecontrol lastweek, and code it using my indy maxsys, it succeed but there are no cruise control icon on speedometer, i tried and the cruise control worked! But there are no icon about cruisecontrol at all on the speedo
My car is e87 120i, does anyone know what happened?
It is a seperate feature you have to code to the car in the kombi module to display cruise control speed.
 
#171 ·
Giggs said:
Adejul45 said:
I retrofit cruisecontrol lastweek, and code it using my indy maxsys, it succeed but there are no cruise control icon on speedometer, i tried and the cruise control worked! But there are no icon about cruisecontrol at all on the speedo
My car is e87 120i, does anyone know what happened?
It is a seperate feature you have to code to the car in the kombi module to display cruise control speed.
Okay, i will try to code the combi module then using the maxsys..
 
#172 ·
Hi all! I'm new here :) looking for some help but couldn't find the answer on this thread.

I've had some issues with installing a retrofit cruise control on my 2007 E81 118i.
So I was wondering which warning lights should turn on before the coding part?
On mine, the brake and DSC ones + tire pressure indicator immediatly turn on, but also the steering system AFTER I turn the steering wheel. Is that normal?

I wanted to get it coded at a BMW specialist here in Belgium but it failed as soon as the guy turned the steering (during the calibration?). I thought of a faulty slip ring (I got the part used from ebay, part number 61316965295/slip ring 6967324) so I simply swapped the two slip rings, but the steering warning light still turns on. Everything else seems to work fine, even the rear wash/wipe.
Before I try to get it coded again, I wanted to know if that was normal or maybe I don't have the right part number.
I checked on realoem but still not sure it's the right one.
My car doesn't have MFSW or auto wipers (not on the new control stalks either). The original part numbers are 9110873 (switch unit) and 6989556 (SR).

Thanks in advance!
 
#173 ·
Trez said:
I've had some issues with installing a retrofit cruise control on my 2007 E81 118i.
So I was wondering which warning lights should turn on before the coding part?
On mine, the brake and DSC ones + tire pressure indicator immediatly turn on, but also the steering system AFTER I turn the steering wheel. Is that normal?
Unless I'm mistaken, warning lights for the DTC/steering and sometimes even ABS are normal/expected if you've taken the slip ring off and should go away once the steering angle is recalibrated. If any are persisting past a successful calibration you could try to clear the fault code(s) (which the local specialist should have done there and then with INPA anyway)?

You could also try turning the wheel through to full lock in both directions a few times - seems to work for some people.
 
#174 ·
shaggy6 said:
Here are some pictures of my recently purchase cruise control switch pack which unfortunately was a auto wiper :( so still on the hunt.
Any way here are some pictures of the slip ring connectors / switch pack

The assembled unit


The auto wiper


The front connectors


Hopefully this might come in some use at some point

Chris
Just a quick question as Iam getting in a right pickle trying to find parts needed

Does the front connector with the mfsw and airbag connector plugs on spin round as some of the pictures show the plugs at the bottom of the slip ring and others at the top ?

Thanks
 
#175 ·
Retrofitted cruise control on my e87.
BMW part part number on old unit: 61316965294 (without auto wipers) (2005 e87)
BMW part part number on new unit: 61319123043(with auto wipers) (2008 e87)

Everything work, the only difference is the green light that indicates auto wipers, will turn on when you activate the button. :cool2:
 
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