lejohn

Hello everyone,

This is my first post on the forum, so it might not look as good as i would hope.

So i bought a 2004 BMW 530i about a year ago and i'm very proud of it. i'm looking forward into building it the way i want it to be. But anyways, i realised after a few months that the cup holder was broken. it didn't want to slide back in because a piece was missing. and instead of just changing the part i decided to mod it so i could have my phone dock and recharge. not having a cup holder is not a very big deal since i don't even drink/eat in my car (gotta keep it clean right?). So i'm posting my mod hoping other people will find it interesting and try to do it themselves.

So here we go !
Obviously we're going to have to remove the cup holder from it is in the car, so for those who don't know how to do it !

First we need to remove the 2 screws located on the top right and bottom left once the cop holder is in the opened stage. Pull. Done.

Next, we need to open it. You can use a screw driver, a butter knife or pretty much anything that is thin and solid. Since i had the tools, i used an angled trim remover to get a better leverage and not break the plastic clips. If you break any of them it's normal, some of them are melted and stuck to the cover. Don't worry everything clips back together at the end.

To recharge my phone i wanted a docking station to fill in the hole after i removed all the cup holder components, but unfortunately i couldn't find a ''slim'' dock station so i bought the cheapest one off ebay (around 5$ with shipping).

Once it arrived my expectations were right. it was not going to fit 3. so i trimmed it down to thickness with a dremel tool. You can use a metal saw or any thin edge saw, that way your cut is going to be straight. Smooth the edges with plane old small grit sand paper and glue it back together. (sorry forgot to take a picture of it).
The docking station i bought required me to plug it with a micro usb cable ( a standard cable for any android phone). luckly the cup holder has a hole in the back of it where a cable is going to fit perfectly 4.
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After everything was glued, i measured the radius of the cup holder hole and used a compass to circle to dock station diameter where i would need to cut it in order to make it fit in there. cut it to a circle with a dremel tool but make it a bit bigger than the cup holder diameter and sand it down until you get a tight fit. (don't glue it yet !) after that was done i tried it out and realised that in order to get my phone to face me when i'm in my car that the cable didn't have enough space because of the old plastic bits. i think you can guess which tool you should use to get rid of those 5.

Once that is removed try to fit the dock station in and plug the cable. the end of my cable was a bit to thick so i trimmed it off with a knife but that wasn't enough so i grooved the cup holder to make the cable fit in better 6.
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We're about finished with this. all you have to do is glue the cable into place so it doesn't unplug and put the cover back on. oh yeah, i almost forgot ! you HAVE to paint a no apple restriction on 7. And we're done, you can plug your USB cable into an adapter in the car or do what i did and plug it into my Dension Gateway 500s BT


And there you have it folks ! An Android Recharging Docking Station.
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Hope this interest a few people. and if i ever do another mod i'll post it on the website.

Anzafin

Very innovative! Thank you for sharing the idea and the DIY!

- Antti -

tgm001

That's a nice idea and a very well described DIY !

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only 5 series enthousiast here in QC ! tsé

KyleB

That is very slick.

Frank and Beamer

nice mod , original