How to Replace Windshield Wiper Switch 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 windshield wiper switch on this 2001 BMW 325 XI. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description, head over to 1aauto.com.

With the trunk open, we're 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 millimeter socket and a ratchet, loosen up this nut for the negative terminal. That's loose. Slide off the cable, slide it out of the way. So 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 is out, you'll get an airbag light.

So what we're going to do is, after disconnecting the battery, just put the key in the ignition, turn the wheel to the 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's probably not going to fit back there. But 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, at least, get that screw broken free, and we can do the same on this side. If you don't have enough room here, what you can do is, you can telescope the wheel out, bring it down, see if you have more room. If you have more room, try to break this free this way. And that's really on there pretty good. So loosen that up. When that's loose, 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. With 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 the bag part facing up. You don't want it to explode this way, if it exploded by accident. Now I'm going to take a 16 millimeter socket and a ratchet, and I'm going to hold the steering wheel while I do this. Loosen up the nut, I mean the bolt. You can use a longer ratchet or a breaker bar to loosen this. All right, there we go.

Once it breaks free, it's easy, so be careful. Yeah, you probably don't want to have the ratchet going this way towards the windshield because it'll loosen up on your quick. So loosen up on this. Once it's almost loose, take that out. What I like to do is just put this on a couple threads, and then just grab the steering wheel, loosen that up. Sometimes if the steering wheel is stuck, you're going to need a puller, but this one's not too bad. Take that out, get the steering wheel out.

Now, it is marked where the steering wheel will go, it's keyed. But be careful when you go to put it back on, just take it... Put it on the same way you took it off. So this has a retainer for the clock spring that when you put the steering wheel on, this pushes down on this, and then the clock spring can spin. So as long as you have the steering wheel straight when you take it off, this clock spring's not going to spend. Normally, I just tape it up so that it won't spin, because if you spin the clock spring, you're going to break it. I am going to pull this lower cover off, just to gain more access to this cover. It's just going to give me more room. So I'll just take a Phillips head screwdriver. I'll take these screws out here, and there's two more over here. Pull that down.

There is a retainer right here. You just twist it, loosen this up so that just twists to the side like that, and then you can pull it out. And then there's a pushpin right here. You can use a pocket screwdriver or you can use a trim tool. Pull the center part of the pushpin out first, just like that. You can pull the push pin out. Then just grab this panel, slide it down. You can disconnect the speaker right here. There's two other things over here. Put these OBDII port, just slide this lock back like this, then from the other side, open up the connector, and then you can push the center straight up, just like that. And then the floor light, you disconnect the connector, right there, just slide it up. There's two push pins. One right here, one right here. Just take a pocket screwdriver, and right in the center, you're just going to push it up just a little bit to release it. You might be able to work it out. You might have to get a couple screwdrivers, pull it down just like that.

We'll do the same with the other one. Actually, just pull down on this, and then it's just going to sit in there. On this top cover there is a Phillips head screw, right there, so use a Phillips head screwdriver. Just take it off. All right, remove that screw. So there's some fabric that's holding that on, so rather than take that off completely, I'm just going to leave that like that. I have four screws I need to take out right here, here, here, and here. I'm going to use a T25 driver. You could use a socket and a ratchet if you wanted to. Take these out. Take those out. We can just grab this whole assembly, slide it right out. There's three connectors I need to disconnect. One right here, disconnect that, and down here, just squeeze the locks and then this one right here. Squeeze the locks, slide it out. You squeeze on both sides of the connector. There's a lock on both sides and they slide out. On the backside of here, there's two locks, one here and one here. Just grab it with your fingers and just slide it out.

Now, I'm going to take the wiper switch, just slide this in through the back. Line the holes up, and then just lock it in place. All right, now we're going to take these switches and clock springs, we're going to connect the connector. Connect that one right there. This green one goes underneath. Line that up and lock it in place, and then this black one goes over here. Right there, just like that. Then slide this in position. Make sure the holes are lined up. We'll take the screws. I'm going to use a T25 driver. Get these started. I'll get them all started first and then snug them down. Those are all in, so I'll just snug these down, not too tight, it is plastic. Now for this top piece, what I thought was just a screw is actually a push pin, so I had to pull the lower part of the pushpin out and then take the screw part, and screw that in.

Line that up, and then I'll just take a regular screwdriver and screw that in, or you can try to push it in. Yep, I'm just going to use a screwdriver. Just take a Phillips head screwdriver. It helps if you have a shorter screwdriver, makes it easier, and just snug that up a little bit. You don't even have to make it tight. It's just got to go all the way down. Now we'll take the lower steering wheel cover. I'm just going to telescope scope this down, the telescoping handle. Then line this up. These little pins, you want those to line up.

Make sure that stuff lines up there, lock that in, same on this side, just like that. Now, we'll take these two pushpins. Now when we push these in, before the centerpiece went all the way through, so what you can do is either push it back, oops, push it back like that, or you can slide it all the way out, and then push back into this position. We can slide this in like that, and then just push the center so that it's flush, just like that. We'll do the same with this one. All right, now I'm going to take the kick panel. I'm going to connect the wiring for this, hook up the speaker, so I'll move this here. The red one goes to the speaker, lock that in place. This one goes to the light. It's going to be kind of hard to see, and you have to just feel for it on the backside of the light, just to line it up. If it doesn't go on right the first time, you can flip the connector around.

Yeah, there we go. So the connector on this side, this little tab, has to go like that to that inside of the car, at least, on this car. Lock that in place. Then with the OBDII connector, just slide this in position, and then use the lock. Well, you click it down first, and then lock it in place. Slide this back into position. I need some clips up here, right there, and right there. I'll just close this door to the OBDII port. Take the Phillips head screws and the Phillips head screwdriver, get this one started, get this one started, and then that one right there. We have a pushpin, it's going to go right here. Put that pushpin in, make sure that's lined up, and then push it in. Then we'll take this retainer, this actually fell out while we had the kick panel out, slide this in position, and then you just twist it 90 degrees, just like that. It locks in place. Then once all that stuff's all set and everything's lined up good, we'll just snug up these screws with a Phillips head screwdriver.

Take the steering wheel, remember we want to line this line up for the base of the column, right there. You might have to wiggle this a little bit. If you look at it, right now, I could put the steering wheel on like that, but that's actually wrong. What I have to do is slide it up, just move it over one tooth, wiggle that. So make sure you set that right there and you can take the bolt, install the bolt. All right, with that all the way down, now I'm going to take a 16 millimeter socket extension and a torque wrench. I'm going to torque this to 45 foot-pounds, and remember hold the steering wheel, and you don't really want to use all of the force on the steering lock to do this. So you might need a a helper to help hold the steering wheel while you do this. That's not too bad. Now, take the airbag. We want to connect these connectors.

This one goes right here, just line it up. It is slotted. And then the same with this one. That one's going go right there. Just line that up in position, just like that. I am going to take the key, just rotate the steering wheel. Take the T25 driver. You can wiggle the airbag to see if he got that started, and 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. And tighten that one snug, and you're good. You're all set to hook the battery up. We can take the negative side, connect the negative side. Take the same 10 millimeter socket and ratchet, 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.

Thanks for watching. If you want the parts to do it yourself, check out 1aauto.com. The place for DIY auto repair.