O2 sensor heater...what can affect it?

[Beej '86 325es]

But you did say some of the primarys coming out of the head were colder than others, so that problem is solved;)

Very true. Cylinder 3 was the hottest running cylinder...and that's the one with the leaking injector. Yahtzee!

[trackjunkie21]

Did you fix the injector issue? I'm curious to see the AFR's afterwards.

[Beej '86 325es]

Not yet, I'm debating on taking it back to my mechanic who just replaced the o-rings a few months ago.

[lolcantturn]

Changed to an E34 harness with an uncut O2 to remove any variables.....heater turns on normally, idle is perfect, VSS works completely, pulls hard, runs very very smooth, as if you stepped into an E36 and turned the key and drove. Not sure what exactly changed, or why it works, but it does, and I'm happy ;)

[Beej '86 325es]

Awesome - glad to hear you got it running smoothly!
I would give that a shot myself, but that will be a very last resort. With as clean as I've made my engine bay, I'd have to disassemble a TON to be able to change the harness out.
Although, at the moment I've got half of it disassembled anyway. I'll ponder that for a day or so and maybe just bite the bullet.

[lolcantturn]

Awesome - glad to hear you got it running smoothly!
I would give that a shot myself, but that will be a very last resort. With as clean as I've made my engine bay, I'd have to disassemble a TON to be able to change the harness out.
Although, at the moment I've got half of it disassembled anyway. I'll ponder that for a day or so and maybe just bite the bullet.

Let me add that I've actually driven it 500 miles with the harness so it's not an isolated incident where it works at one point and not the other!

Changing a harness is easy and won't mess up the look of your bay, in fact the E34 harness is cleaner because the wire box behind the manifold is smaller and tidier and the relays go inside the glovebox as opposed to outside like the E36 ;) It shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes once you wire the C101 !

[nando]

or your relays can go inside the harness cover if you've got one. :)

[Beej '86 325es]

I think right now the only thing I'd have to remove is the harness itself and the manifold. I think I've got damn near everything else torn apart now.

It used to look like this...(the M3 harness shrouds aren't shown, but there's no wire visisble).

[lolcantturn]

Any progress to this?

[Beej '86 325es]

Any progress to this?

Yeah, the car is fine. I've come to understand that's the normal operation of the oxygen sensor and that my issue is from the tune. I won't elaborate too much now, but I'll report back once it's all straightened out.

I'm glad I did all of the research and testing though, because I did fix a couple of minor things along the way that needed to be addressed. Plus I know a hell of a lot more about how the engine and computer system work together now. As a liaison engineer by profession, I love digging into stuff like this. :)

[328ijunkie]

:buttrock

[kronus]

bump from the dead; running into a seemingly-related issue where my car pops an O2 sensor CEL with similar timing and has a rough warm idle.

anything ever learned from this?

could it have something to do with the purge valve?