Last weekend I was washing the car, as I’ve been using it a little more to go to work (its only 5miles away) and I noticed some break dust on the wheels as well as dirt on the car itself. I cant take it to a carwash (unless its a hand one) as I’m not sure how that works with the soft top, let alone an old soft top. I decided to wash the car in the driveway. Not really wash but more rinse and wipe down, but anyways. As I was washing the wheels and scrubbing the break dust off, I noticed that the wheel center caps are starting to come off on the sides. I thought: “No way BMW makes these so poorly.” So I went on and finished washing the car.

Later that week I went out in the BMW to run some errands and when I got back I noticed that some of the center caps were gone…. I looked for genuine center caps on FCPEuro and some of the other websites but the design of the ones I found was different than these that are coming off:

To me this looked kind of sketchy. Not sure if this is some aftermarket one, or if this is actually what BMW made in the 90s…. I though hmmm, are they actual ones? Anyways, I couldn’t find anything online to prove one way or the other, but since one had already fallen off I decided to buy a set of 4 and replace them all.

I ordered 4 here: https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-wheel-center-cap-36136783536 without really reading the details. Turns out when they arrived that I had gotten 4 sets of 4. I was wondering why they were so expensive….. After returning the other 3 sets, I managed to get these installed.

To take out the old ones, I had to use a rag and a screwdriver to pry out the whole cap (the plastic piece, and the emblem). The rag is there in order not to damage the wheel with the screwdriver when you are prying the cap against the wheel.

To install the new ones, I made sure to line up the text with the M logo on the wheel and just push it, and it snaps in place. Small “fix” but makes a huge difference in the appearance of the car! Plus these caps are made differently so hopefully they will not come of when I am washing the wheels next time. Here is the result: