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      05-30-2017, 07:59 PM   #41
WhatsADSM
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Drives: 2011 135i
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Milwaukee

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Quote:
Originally Posted by houtan View Post
Fair prices for both. Any durability concerns? Or is the design final?
For all intents and purposes I would say the design is final. I think this is the 10th revision or so. I played with various parameters to get them to fit *just* so. If you take a look at your steering wheel you will find that there actually isn't a ton of room between the wheel and the stalks (namely the lane change stalk and the the wiper stalk). You need to balance the ability to easily get to the paddle without being so close that the back of your fingers are always on it, and being so far away that you can't easily get to the stalks.

As for durability they are FAR stronger than the stock piece. They are a few times thicker than the stock part (my bracket on the left, stock on the right):

For fun I actually put one end of the bracket on the ground and the other on a 1" piece of wood and stood on it. Didn't budge. So I am confident in saying if you do something crazy with the paddles you won't break my part but likely one of the other stock plastic brackets which hold it to the wheel. BTW it appears the weakest link in the whole assembly would actually be to PUSH against the paddle (opposite of what you should be doing) as hard as you can. That will stress the two little tabs on the one of the stock plastic parts that are fairly small. So I don't ever recommend trying that, aftermarket paddles or stock.

The only thing left really is to dial in the final material which will almost certainly be polycarbonate.

If someone wants to test drive them and give me their opinion I'm certainly cool with that. Always nice to have a second opinion, and my car is down at the moment for a bunch of other track prep work anyways.
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