I found a new steering wheel off ebay for an awesome deal. It came off a 2008 Cooper S (R56). I have a 2004 R50, w/ 2 spoke steering and M/F controls. Is it possible for me to swap out this wheel with my own? I know I will need a new airbag, hardware, etc. Anybody tackled a project like this or something similar? Should none of this be possible anybody want to buy an all leather black sport steering wheel off a 2008 R56?

 

i am VERY interested to see how this turns out. I hope it does work, because id love to finish updating the look of my interior, th two spoke just looks a little odd with everything else new and modern in my car...

 

I have some real homework to do, any help would be appreciated... I don't see why it wouldn't work... I'm going to try and just see if will even fit in place of my stock wheel. (sans airbag, m/f controls) If it fits that way, I should be golden.

 

I have read somewhere that 2nd Gen (R56) steering wheel does not (direct) fit 1st Gen MINI but I might be wrong. If you able to do it, please post up the photo and the how-to

Good luck

 

TRY AT OWN RISK.

It will work... but it doesn't look very hot. You have to dremel out the back of the steering wheel a little bit on both sides of the opening to allow the wire harness to pass through. You still have to find an airbag to fit though, which is the tricky part. (they range in price $90-$300) You CAN get an airbag from an 04/06 3 spoke wheel, to fit on the wheel but it looks "iffy" as all hell. An airbag from a 08 R56 will fit just fine, but the wiring is slightly different. You can make it work if you want to do some minor splicing. I chose not to (splicing wires for the airbag seemed like disaster to me) because I didn't know enough about the system to try it on my daily driver (I'd hate to NEED the airbag and not have it)

Personally, I'm just going to buy the JCW wheel instead.