E46 Center Console Accessory Panels

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

I wanted to fit multiple USB charger ports in my E46 while keeping it clean. At first I was going to replace just the cigarette/accessory port with a USB one, but since that circuit is always hot I decided not to.
So instead I designed a front and rear accessory panel.
The front is good, works good. Took me a while to find a thickness for the key-way pieces.
The rear tho is alright as-is, it doesn't curve with the shape of the center console. This could be edited later on to archive that. But it's functional for now.
I designed these in OpenSCAD like everything I do, so it should be good to go to add your own stuff to it if you know OpenSCAD. For now I designed it to add three holes, one for the screw on USB port that is meant to replace your stock ports. Another for the slightly different shaped extender USB port, and then one for an aux port.
If you are not comfortable with OpenSCAD and would like me to add some additional holes, just let me know. I'll need to know all the dimensions needed for that hole.
A few notes,
1) If you want to add switches you'll have to increase the depth of the inside tray to clear the flap on the center console.
2) The current depth is designed to clear my first USB port for I can close/open the flap.
3) If you want to use the USB ports how I did you'll have to drill large holes on the bottom of your center console tray piece to clear the bottoms of the USB ports. There is a lot of room under this panel so you don't need to worry about hitting the tunnel. At least you won't see the holes.
An additional note, I'm not going to help you thru how to wire this up. But I'll give a brief example of what I did.
I spliced a Y off the existing cigarette lighter power wire, I have this going to a relay.
For the relay's signal there is an optional connector under the center console next to the e-brake handle. I forget the wire color but one came on with the ignition. I used my multi-meter to check this. A youtube video described this connector, but described a red-yellow wire as the ignition wire, which was not the case for my car.