8 replies to this topic

[Jimmy Hat]

As the title, I have just purchased a wood and leather steering wheel out of an MG TF on ebay. It is the type with the tiptronic gear change controls on it. I have heard of people wiring these controls up to control the stereo, which would be nice, as it's not something I've seen on more than one other Mini, but has anyone on here done it or can point to any methods of wiring the controls up to do that?

My stereo is an Alpine one from a few years ago, CDA 9812RB.

Thanks!

[Ruckus]

I've only seen people do this with MPi's, these have the column and wheel boss ready to take these wheels, and have slip rings built in to them for the contacts on the back of the wheel to contact to.

What year is your mini?

[Jimmy Hat]

Yeah mine is an MPi, it's a 1997, also replacing said slip ring in the wheel with an MGF one as mine's knackered.

[evansisgreat]

I had thought about this before, didn't know it had been done.
My MPI wheel has a connector with 2 wires that attaches to the slip ring. The slip ring has capacity to have many more wires running through it and I'd assume the mgtf wheel has a connector with more wires that plugs into the slip ring. You'd need to get hold of a connector for the other side of the slip ring so these wires can actually be ran through the ring and actually connected to something.
As for wiring it to a head unit, you'd need to see if your head unit is capable and then most HU's require a wiring harness to make it all work. It's not that big a job and I think the effort would be well worth it.

[Jimmy Hat]

I'm sure I did see something somewhere about it having been done but don't know if it was on a Mini or not, might have been an MGF.

Yeah mine looks similar. I was thinking something like that to get the wires through the slip ring, but not sure about the connector bit - can't seem to find any more information on this? The most I can figure out is that the ring does have some spare connectors running through it which were used for the steptronic system on the TF.

The stereo is capable of being linked to the harness as far as I know, just not too sure how the steptronic controls would all be connected to the harness for the stereo?

[Jimmy Hat]

http://caraudiosecur...s_id/14742.html

Suppose I would have to buy something like that, and chop it up so the steptronic controls linked up to it

[Rhys]

If I were you I would do this http://forums.mg-rov...ad.php?t=401571 I'm not too sure what you actually want to achieve with the tiptronic controls, as far as I can see there are only 2, what would you want to control with them?

[Jimmy Hat]

Thanks for the link, I'll have a good look through that when I'm wiring it.

Probably wasn't specific enough about that, my bad, was planning to have the left one controlling the volume and the right one controlling the track backwards/forwards buttons whatever they're called.

[Jimmy Hat]

Apparently there are only 3 free places on the connector to wire actions up to, so it would be impossible to have one as volume up/down and one as forward/back

Aside from something really custom, can't think of any more uses for this really, I suppose I could have one for volume and one for the mode setting on the head unit?

By the way the switches do move forwards and backwards, which can be linked to different actions, so you can have 4 different combinations, but there are only 3 spare connectors on the loom :/ Back to the drawing board with this one...


I have posted on the MG Rover forum about this, hopefully all the MG F and TF owners on there might know more about it. May be able to use the terminal for the illumination on the switches.

Edited by Jimmy Hat, 07 June 2012 - 05:39 PM.