How to Replace Steering Wheel Cruse Control Switches 1997-2006 BMW 325Xi

What's up, guys? I'm Andy, from 1A Auto. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the cruise control switches on this 2001 BMW 325xi. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description, head over to 1AAuto.com.

With the trunk open, over on the right side, or the passenger side, there should be a cover that goes right here. This vehicle doesn't have one, but you're going to want to remove that cover. Battery is located right here. First thing I'm going to do is take a 10 mm socket and ratchet and loosen up this nut for the negative terminal. When that's loose, slide off the cable, slide it out of the way.

You want to make sure you disconnect the battery before you take the airbag off because you don't want the airbag system seeing that the airbag's out. You'll get an airbag light. What we're going to do is, after disconnecting the battery, just put the key in the ignition, turn the wheel to side like this, disconnect the key.

Then I'm going to take a Torx driver, now this is actually really difficult. There's two holes. There's one hole on the bottom, one hole on the top. Now you need the driver because you need the length, otherwise a socket is probably not going to fit back there. Then this driver actually has a hole right here, so what you can do is, to get some leverage, you can put another pocket screwdriver or something in the hole and then break this screw free. Generally, it's very difficult to always get that screw broken free.

Now we can do the same on this side. If you don't have enough room here, what you can do it, you can telescope the wheel out, bring it down, and see if you have more room. I made more room. I'm going to try to break this free this way. That's really on there pretty good. Loosen that up. When that's loose, just take the key, turn the wheel back to straight, take the key out. I can just grab this airbag. You can disconnect it over here, there's the connector right here. Disconnect it right there, and then disconnect this connector. This goes to the switches.

When you have the airbag out of the vehicle and you want to place it down, make sure you always place it with the bag part facing up. You don't want it to explode this way, if it exploded by accident.

Disconnect these connectors right here. Just grab the connector, pull it out. There is a little tab in there, but it's hard to get to. Disconnect this connector as well, just like that. Then there's two screws in here. I'm going to use a T25 driver to take those screws out. Make sure you have the airbag sitting like this. You don't want to have it face down just in case something happens. Take that out, slide the switch right out.

Take the cruise control switch, slide it in position. Take the screw, and get this one started. Once that one's started, we'll get the other one started. Tighten these both down. Just snug them up. Then I'll take the connectors, get this one connected, and line it up, and lock it in place. Now take the airbag, we want to connect these connectors. This one goes right here. Just line it up. It is slotted. Then, same with this one. That one's going to go right there. Just line that up in position, just like that. I'm going to the key, just rotate the steering wheel. Take the T25 driver. You can wiggle the airbag to see if you've got that started. Tighten that up pretty snug. That's good. Same with the top one. If you have trouble getting this one in, you can twist the steering wheel back the other way. It's a little bit easier to tighten it from underneath here. Tighten that one snug. You're good. You're all set to hook the battery up.

You can take the negative side, connect the negative side. Take the same 10-mm socket and ratchet and tighten it up. That's good. At this point, if you had that cover, you're going to want to put the cover back where it goes.

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