mroberte

I have the premium A3 and when I bought the car I thought the car I was buying was a premium plus, however the shady car dealership did a bait & switch.

With that said, I bought a car that didn't have the two things I specifically wanted, the sport seats (the thigh support for my long legs, I'm 6'3) and the paddle shifters.

I bought a steering wheel off of Ebay and followed directions on removal and installation from The Audi A1 Forum ? View topic - HOW TO - Install a Flat Bottom Steering Wheel !.

You will get a bunch of errors at first, but drive the car and the car will figure itself out. The three errors I got were Stability control, Hill Hold Assist and Tire Pressure gauges. I took a quick trip around my block and everything went back to normal.

Sidenote: I think unplugging the battery will get rid of the Comfort open/close functions which you might have to re-enable again with VCD. My driver side window auto up/down wasn't functioning at first too and then it started working.

Some pictures of the install:


DISCONNECT YOUR GROUND BATTERY!!
Turn wheel to get to backside of clips. After you pop the airbag off, release the white clip on the yellow connector along with the smaller wire.


Clips you need to push to remove airbag


Use a 12MM star bolt to remove the steering wheel nut


Make a note or take a picture of the spline lines. This will be dead center for your wheels and the steering wheels.

arU4ic

Dude, that is a ballZ, killer upgrade I am super impressed! Nice work.

Mr.Gatsby

No modifications needed to use paddles after install?

mroberte

No mods after the install at all. Its really just plug and play. I'm assuming the start/stop button is/will be the same situation if it doesn't need additional wiring.

So it seems the car will actually relearn itself if you ever disconnect the battery. as I noted above, I lost the ability to use my keyfob to open/close the windows for comfort close/open. Also lost the auto one-touch window up/down. After a few minutes, the car now acts like previous and all functions work without worry.

Another interesting note is that when you change gears with the paddles, the car will actually hold the gears longer than if you switch with the shifter. Some stated that shifts are faster in Sport mode. I don't think the shifts are faster at all, just the same.

Really happy with it so far!

jmick21

After searching around a bit I found another project where they retrofitted a Audi TT S-line steering wheel:
2015 Audi 8V A3: Project A3 Sedan - Parts Score




Can you give more info about which steering wheels you were looking at on ebay, or how you found that one?

Sellers like this one have a couple options, but the $300 A8 wheel has a different logo for what is our 'customizable' button (not sure that matters?) and then the A6 S-line wheel jumps to $700.

Did you find better options than ones similar to these?

mattchow

I bought the sline air leather/smooth leather flat bottom steering wheel from Europrice, zero errors. I did the air leather shift **** as well.

arU4ic

Seems like there must be some sport package module changes - particularly for the tranny… have you put VAGCOM to your car yet to check around? If not, let me know, I'll look the next time I'm poking around in the modules, maybe even tomorrow.

mroberte

Check ebay non-US sites, particularly German ebay site. Make sure the seller will actually ship to you before purchasing. I bought the wheel for roughly $117 bucks. Its not the flat bottom, but all US and Euro-ish sites shown $700-1400 dollar steering wheels. Ya NO!

gamegenie

Good you figured out how to exchange out the steering wheel.

I like the round steering wheel over the D-wheel, it makes me feel like I'm in an A8.

jmick21

Thanks for the tips mroberte, I ended up finding another A3 wheel with paddles for $150. Probably will install next weekend if it gets here by then!