[kevinkay]

OEM welcome carpet light retrofit - this is the striped ground lighting when you unlock the car.
The plastic skirt trim is a different part number with carpet lights - the hole is pre-cut. BUT on my 2019 G01, there is a marked outline on the inside of the skirt and I was able to cut it out and not buy new trim skirts. For me the cost of the retrofit was about $200 because I had most of the parts and tools already - just needed the lights. Do this at your own risk - this is ONLY what worked for me!

$200.00 I Bought a set of BMW OEM lights from this guy on Ebay, he included the connectors. He has 3 more sets at time of this writing - https://www.ebay.com/itm/BMW-light-c...72.m2749.l2649

$2.40 Blind rivets, 20 from China Ebay - https://www.ebay.com/itm/20x-Car-Bli...72.m2749.l2649 (You can get them at the dealer prob $5 each, I used 4 of them).

$6.99 Electrical connector pins. Ebay, China - https://www.ebay.com/itm/DIY-Stereo-...72.m2749.l2649 I forgot if the lights came with pins, you need 6 (or 4 if you splice onto door lights - explain later). I bought these for a different job - they are used in a lot of BMW connectors.

$16.99 Harbor Fright rivet gun. I had one already. https://www.harborfreight.com/hand-r...ets-97757.html You need this to pop the rivet on the wheel arch trim. You can turn the front wheels to fit the tool in, on the back you have to take off the wheel to fit the tool. I have tried in the past to pull these rivets with a pliers - it doesn’t work without the tool

$? about 15 feet of wire. I had 20 gage that I used

tools:
coping saw
hand file or Dremel, (I have and used HF $10. tool) - https://www.harborfreight.com/rotary...yABEgIQS_D_BwE
optional soldering iron - the pin connectors can crimp on but I soldered them also
Metric sockets - I think 10 and 8 for screws/nuts under skirt, snake or wire for fishing wires. typical hand tools - screwdrivers/awl

The most difficult part is removing the trim skirt. The instruction tell you to pull off the entire front and back wheel trim. I ONLY popped the one lowest rivets on the front and back wheel trim and was able to finagle the shirt off. You use a punch to push in the center to release the rivet, the rivet can not be re-used. My drivers skirt came off with most of the clips releasing from the skirt (you want them to release from the car). I don’t have the correct tool, I used just a couple of plastic putty knives on the drivers side but then used a thin wrench and plastic putty knives on the passenger side which worked out much better - the clips popped off correctly.

https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/g...nts/1Vnc9s23Mw

The skirts have the markings of where you need to cut the hole out for the lights. The skirt has the hole for the adjustment screw already cut. The light comes with peel adhesive. I drilled a 1/2 hole at the round corner of the cut out then used my coping saw to cut the hole out. The plastic cuts easy. Then I smoothed and straighten it out with the dermel and a hand file. Keep checking the fit with the light. I cleaned the plastic with paint thinner before adhering. Mark an outline before you peel the backing and your ready to stick it - no going back once stuck.

I pulled the wire from the skit area through the rubber stopper (made a hole in it) to one the inner door sill holes (putting the sill trim back on -the clip goes into the same hole with the wire - worked out fine). I ran the drivers side wires both ground and power - (but you can ground anywhere along the way) behind the hood release panel (there is a torque screw and tricky clip to remove the handle) https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/g...sts/1VnbqhWR9E
then below the brake pedal and under the carpet - across the center console (got an electrical snake across) and down into the BDC connectors. I powered the lights as OEM on pin 40 and 52 at A268*3B https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/g...ler/1Vnbxlr5T9
https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/g...-5b/1VnYX9ksW9
https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/g...-3b/1VnXSWCgBb

BUT you will have to code to get it to work. If you do not want to do coding then the supplier I bought from said to splice onto the LED handle light wires (I did not research this).

I grounded at the firewall multi ground location (did you know that Brown wires are always ground in BMW’s and maybe all foreign cars? - but we typically use green as ground wires).

I found the coding for “carpet lights” in the Head unit section set it to Active but the lights did not work - they needed coding in the BDC module. I VO coded for 4UR (ambient lighting package for carpet lights) only for the BDC - I did not want options in the head unit for the ambient lighting so I ONLY VO coded the BDC with the 4UR.

[kevinkay]

Part 2 of photos

[hinckley]

Wow. Gotta congratulate you. That's quite a project and quite well done.

[stelthy]

Awesome! Well done.

[_ink]

wow, good in you man! you went balls deep, but highly worth it!

[chicagofan00]

Goddamn we have some dedicated and talented individuals on this forum. Well done.

[kevinkay]

Originally Posted by chicagofan00

Goddamn we have some dedicated and talented individuals on this forum. Well done.

OR foolish with too much time....

For new 2020 builds Ambient lighting is a stand alone option at $250.
With my 2019 it required leather also.
My car is often parked in an alley that occasionally has rodents running around - I want my car well illuminated when I approach, plus I think they are cool.

[gugin]

Kevin: you are correct that coding the LIGHT_CARPET option in the head unit is not enough. You also need to code BDC_BODY2. My car came with the 4UR Ambient Lighting option. I simulated the removal of 4UR in E-Sys and let E-Sys generate the default coding files for all ECUs in my car. I then compared the actual coding files in my car to the simulated ones. Only two ECU were affected by the removal of 4UR--the head unit and the BDC. The differences are provided in the attached Excel. Some of the coding in BDC clearly pertains to the ambient lighting inside the car and is likely unnecessary to code. The two options that caught my attention are LIC_FEATURE_5 and LIN_RGB_SYSTEM_VERBAUT. I would start by experimenting with them to see if these two are all that is needed to make the light carpet functional.

[CUG BMW]

Wonderful but strong job.
My compliments

[niksss]

Hey man, thanks for the great write up. Can you just tell me which wires are the ground, as I will be attempting this retrofit tomorrow. Thanks !