8. Wire Connectors! Apply the 2 female connector leads each to the RED and BLACK wire coming from to your Cup Holder and Storage Tray. The female connector leads are tricker to apply and I rather do this with the RED and BLACK wires from the Cup Holder and Storage Tray inside my air conditioned home. When done with the female leads go the car and find your console bulb. (Most E36s have these old school filament bulbs under the console that was factory wired for an Ashtray Console Light and if your car is over ten years old chances are this bulb is already blown. My BMW dealership wanted a whopping $12.75 for the replacement filament bulb, which is how I decided on this DIY to begin with).
Snip the wires that power this bulb (one should be Brown for Ground and the other Grey w/ a Red Stripe for Power) and apply a male connecter lead to each wire. The male leads are way easier to apply hence why I saved them for the car.
When done, go back inside to your Cup Holders and Storage Tray. The glue should be dry by now.
9. Reassemble the Modular Cup Holder 1 and 2 and the Storage Tray Partition into the Modular Console base frame! Okay,
STOP! This bit is important; if you made it to this step and you begin replacing the newly wired Cup Holders and Tray back into the Modular base frame you will quickly realize that it appears that the Modular base frame's section cross bars and all the wiring prevents you from getting them back onto the Modular base frame and now you are wondering why you didn't glue the LED bulbs/wires onto the Holders and Tray after reassembling the Console. Don’t panic, like I did, because this is good thing and the wiring really does not prevent you from replacing them into the Modular base frame. If you had glued the bulbs onto the Cup Holders and Storage Tray after you reassembled the Console then the wiring would have definitely prevented you from getting the modular parts
off the base frame making the process of customizing your console or removing a modular part of the console impossible.
All you have to you have to do is make one end the front (where the Cup Holders go) and the other end the rear (where the Storage Tray Partition goes).
A. Starting at the front end hole slip the Storage Tray sideways through from the top all the way out through to the underside of the base frame. Let all the wiring follow.
B. Now bring the Storage Tray back up thru to the top at hole at the rear end and connect the Storage Tray in it’s place. All the wiring for the Storage Tray should be under the Storage Tray and going from the bottom of the StorageTray to the first hole front end and up thru to the top where it meets the Cup Holders.
C. Now insert the first position Cup Holder and let the bulk of wiring for it sit at the bottom right below it. You will see that there will be only two wires (RED and BLACK) left that join the two Cup Holders and you can easily run these two wires between the cup holders above and in between the Modular base frame's cross bars.
D. Now insert the second position Cup Holder with the bulk of it’s wiring sitting below it and the two wires running above the base fame's cross bars. Now insert the Coin Holder. All the wiring should now be beneath everything.
10. Return to the car and connect the male and female leads. The reason I used snap on connecters here is so that at anytime in the future I can easily disconnect the lights by simply unplugging them. Test the LEDs again after you make the final connections. Now replace the entire Console back down in its original place and make sure all the wiring is underneath the console and none of the wiring is pinched. Since you used
20 gauge wiring like you should have all the wires should easily fit under there.
