When I got my 7AT in December one of the first things I noticed was the heavy resistance and long travel of the paddle shifters. Now maybe Im spoiled coming from an E60 M5, whos SMG paddles were short travel, and required very little effort, but I feel these paddles could use some improvement.
Well here is the fix ladies and gentlemen...$2 3M rubber bumpers! Stick these little suckers on the back of the paddles (right where the bumpers would make contact with the steering column plastic) and viola! Very little travel and almost no effort to upshift/downshift now. These basically take up the slack on the paddles and in turn reduce the "heavy" feeling and long travel. Give it a try...you'll love it! The tranny even seems more responsive (placebo obviously) because it seems to have a more immediate feeling to the paddle selection. You can even file down the bumpers a bit if you want a bit more travel.
These are what I used, they are .14" thick -->
Shop 3M: 3M Self-Stick Rubber Pads, 751ES, Clear
Installed...one on each side...
