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Thread: 3 Spoke Sport Steering Wheels Stitching Question

  1. #1
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    3 Spoke Sport Steering Wheels Stitching Question

    So I've acquired a few E39 tourings, and two of them have 3-spoke Sport steering wheels. I also have a sport wheel from a 2002? 530i. All of them are the later version, but my question is why does one of them have Motorsport color stitching while the other two do not?

    Thanks,

    Vince

  2. #2
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    Hi,

    The M stitching one is an 'M Sport' steering wheel, it's thicker and has the thumbgrips and the lower front panel is styled to it. The other two are most likely 'Sport' steering wheels which are thinner and have no thumbgrips and the lower front panel is the one with the 'split' in the design, sometimes referred to as the 'walrus tooth' version. If they are also M Sport ones, they might've been retrimmed previously and the tri colour stitching wasn't wanted.

    The M Sport ones feel much better to most owners.

    Cheers, Dennis!

  3. #3
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    I don’t know about that Dennis, I have a whole bunch of steering wheels, some are the regular sport wheels, all have the thumb grips, some are thinner, some are thicker, without the M tricolor stitching., all stock, original. Now, the Mtec ll wheel I have that has the tri color m stitching is thicker than the regular M TEC l wheels. I’ve been wondering about all this too and can’t quite figure BMW logic out.
    Set the controls for the heart of the sun

  4. #4
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    Hi

    Here's an 'M Sport' steering wheel;



    Note the thumbgrips at the 10 and 2 o clock positions. Also, the middle/lower spoke, it's not got a 'hole' in it.

    The 'thinner' Sport steering wheels don't have the thumbgrips and there's a 'hole' in the lower/middle spoke. This would be the easiest way to tell them apart when looking at them initially.

    I've not got my own pictures of a Sport steering wheel, even though somewhere I have two of them knocking around!

    From Schmiedmann's site

    https://static.schmiedmann.dk/Produc...267719_big.jpg

    Cheers, Dennis!

  5. #5
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    The wheel in your picture is an Mtec ll wheel, those sport wheels are thicker than all the other older sport wheels. All sport wheels have the thumb grips, much rounder on the older Mtec l wheel. The other wheel you are talking about, the one with the two spokes on the bottom, come off of the regular non sport E46’s out here in the US, might be different in the UK. But all sport wheels here have the thumb grips. The wheels I was taliking about mainly, are the older Mtec l wheels. I have a bunch of those, I have one that has the Tricolor stitching, and it is pretty thick, but nowhere as thick as the Mtec ll wheel, but thicker than all the other Mtec l sport wheels without the tricolor stitching. I just moved into a larger house here in Alexandria a few weeks ago, all that stuff is still somewhere in boxes. I had always wondered about these differences in thicknesses. I had an ‘01 530 sport which I have sold, but I still have the Mtec l wheel that came with it, I have a Canadian spec’d ‘01 540 sport, it is like the usual Euro spec’d sport 540, so we refer to it as a true M Sport 540 which only came to the US in ‘03. Anyway, it came with all the top options but PDC, which I really couldn’t give ten sh!ts about, but it came with the older Mtec l wheel, no tri color stitching, but it was thicker than the wheel from the 530. Then I parted out another ‘01 540 sport which had the tricolor stitching, Mtec l, it’s the same thickness as my current 540 wheel. It yes, the newer Mtec ll sport wheels are all thicker than the older ones.
    Set the controls for the heart of the sun

  6. #6
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    Thanks for all the info and answers! The waters sorta get muddied, though. I have the following steering wheels..

    On a 1999 528iT auto built 4/99, a thinner Sport wheel with Motorsport stitching, on a 2000 528iT manual built 12/99, a thinner Sport wheel with black stitching, and out of a 2003 530ia, a thicker than the other wheels with black stitching and a more rounded center pad with buttons that don't have the rounded touch point. No "split" in the lower spoke. This car also had sport seats, which I also grabbed thanks to Geargrinder's how-to on using a jumper at the fuse to give power to the right circuit of the cadaver to move the seats around.

  7. #7
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    Yeah, that’s how everybody moves the seats around in a dead car. The wheels in the older cars you have are the old sport Mtec l wheels. The wheel in your 530 is the newer Mtec ll wheel. Those are thicker than all the older sport wheels.
    Set the controls for the heart of the sun

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