XSeries-forum

Is anyone familiar with the various elements of a factory fitted electric swivel towbar? I’ve been looking at a Westfalia towbar and wiring kit which is circa £420, but keep getting drawn to the idea of retrofitting the factory swivel towbar instead.

There is the crossbar with swivel ball itself. This has a couple of plugs on it, but what wiring exactly is needed to allow it to be deployed by the button in the boot? Is there a module needed for this side of the operation too? In my head, if I could get the swivelling working, I could just use a Westfalia wiring kit for the 13 pin trailer wiring (I assume this would be easier than trying to work out the OEM wiring).

There are these wiring kits on eBay which seems to be genuine BMW parts (I found the part numbers on here), but it’s not clear what exactly they connect to and what part they play in the whole thing.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334628994...mis&media=COPY

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/383572139...hoCJaIQAvD_BwE

This part seems to be a genuine retrofit electric kit for the full thing, but there’s no mention of a module- if 1 is even required that is.

https://www.hubauer-shop.de/en/retrofit ... 87171.html

Anyone able to offer any assistance or wisdom?!

If I could be certain of what coding is required for the full retrofit kit, I could be tempted just to go with it.

Have you had a look at RealOEM for the kit number? There should be reference to an EBA number. Those are the instructions that you need and if you have a friendly parts person they might print them or email them to you. They might also be in the After Sales Portal - dealer access only - if there’s no EBA code.

From memory the E71 basically required all the seats out and carpets up to feed cabling forward (I’ll bet it can be done without that much effort!) and the E53 was pretty much the same so the F15 may follow the same pattern. Coding was needed for the E70/71. There was also a recommendation to upgrade the fan, which probably adds significantly to the dealer fit cost.

I’ve got one coming on the i4 as it is £900 with the car or over £3k afterwards!

No, had forgotten about realoem actually. However, I’ve decided it’s just too much of a headache so am going to stick with the Westfalia idea instead. I don’t need the towbar until the camping season starts so I’ll try and keep an eye out for some sort of saving.

Cheers for the response though.