I really wanted the JCW Steering Wheel but wanted to retain my paddle shifters, and finally got around to doing it. Thought I would post some pics for anyone else wanting to do this. Only took a couple hours.

Disconnect battery, remove air bag, remove steering wheel from car, remove paddle shifters, remove the three spoke covers from your original steering wheel. These steps are covered elsewhere so I'm not documenting it here.

The back of your stock steering wheel looks like this:



So, you have to make the new steering wheel look similar to that so you can mount the paddles shifters. The hole for the bolt is already there on the JCW SWs but it's covered by plastic. Just use an exacto knife to find the hole and then I used a drill to open up the hole.

My wife is more artistically inclined than I am, so she volunteered to shave the rubber off the back using an exacto knife. She just took her time and shaved off a little piece at a time. Your JCW SW will look like this:



We used a little bit longer screw to retain the paddles since the paddles were slightly further out (I didn't want to cut in as far as the originals were).



Once the paddles are on and you run the wiring it looks like this:



Put it back in the car in reverse of the above steps:



Exactly what I was looking for. Not the best pics but I think it shows the process well enough. I did clean the steering wheel after installation.

 

Nicely done. That is a true grassroots MOD.

Makes me think about swapping one of mine MINIs over to a double clutch trans... Hmmmm?

Again, very nice MOD.

Motor on!

 

Thanks James!

 

I did the same thing last year, but cut out more material from the back of the wheel so that the paddle switches sit flat against the wheel like the base MCS wheel. I just found the hole in the steel portion of the wheel, then used the original wheel as a visual comparison. I didn't need longer screws. I had to assemble and disassemble a couple of times to make sure that the paddle would shift up, the first time I didn't trim enough foam off of the wheel.

It is a great mod, the suede wheel feels great. Nice job getting pics out there.

Have fun,
Mike

 

very good work mate ...

 

I also replaced my standard steering wheel with a JCW with red stitching and also had to modify it to add paddles. Decent write up!