Please help save my marriage

[evilm3chic]

I have an 89 325i with a 92 525i Non Vanos M50 out of an Auto car that me and my husband have been working on for about 6 months now. We swapped the motor in no problems but we've both been banging our heads against the wall for the past couple months trying to figure out why it won't crank. We have power to all 3 relays but no power to the fuel pump fuse so the car turns over but won't crank and we obviously have no fuel. We did some searching last night and found an article on RMEuropean about putting a power wire to the brown/black wire on the auto transmission plug, but after talking to them we found out our 92 harness doesn't have a transmission plug nor a brown/black wire. The ecu is a green label 405 so from what I understand it doesn't have EWS so that doesn't seem to be the problem. At this point my husband is frustrated, he's in the middle of his turbo honda build and my E30 has become a huge thorn in his side and he just gets pissed looking at it, and I just want to drive my damn car at this point. Can someone PLEASE help me figure this out? Hopefully its something simple that we've just completely overlooked... Thanks in advance for the help

[matthugie]

Where in NC are you? Join the NC e30 group on FB and you can get some good local help for sure.

[evilm3chic]

Don't have facebook... but thanks anyway, I'm in Lexington btw

[nrubenstein]

Do you have spark? No fuel with spark is very different from no spark, no fuel.

[evilm3chic]

I do have spark... we even left the fuel lines unconnected so we could make sure which was in and out before we hooked back up and not even a drip of fuel is coming out when we crank it. It turns over fine and even with starting fluid it acts like it wants to crank but it never has

[matthugie]

I posted a link in the group, hopefully Art will show up shortly. He's pretty close and very knowledgeable.

[nrubenstein]

Do you have power coming *out* of the fuel relay? Is the relay known good?

[evilm3chic]

Yes we have power to all the relays not sure if he checked for power out of relays but I do know we don't have power to the Fuel pump Fuse

[evilm3chic]

We were kind of leaning towards a neutral safety switch since the harness is from an auto but didn't know what to do about it, that's when we found the article from RMeuropean talking about a brown/black wire which we didn't have. They were also saying something about the transmission ecu which we don't have we only have 1 small rectangle plug next to the ecu plug.

[e30rapidic]

who made your wiring harness adapter? Have you swapped the relays around.

do you have the wiring diagrams like on wedophones?

[10Toes]

I would try jumping the fuel pump and see if it runs, then work your way back from there.

[10Toes]

I do have spark... we even left the fuel lines unconnected so we could make sure which was in and out before we hooked back up and not even a drip of fuel is coming out when we crank it. It turns over fine and even with starting fluid it acts like it wants to crank but it never has

The IN line is the one that goes from the fuel filter. the fuel should go in at the front fo the fuel rail and the Return line comes from the back after it goes through the Fuel pressure regulator which is connected to the back of the fuel rail.

Front-IN
Back-Return

[idanity]

wow, i don't want you to go over your post limit...after 6 years in membership, you have 8 posts...

and after the lots of Oral chime..well, that certainly relieves a TON of frustration, its still a matter of not running..

10-toes has it right though...1st priority is to ensure the fuel pump is good...jump that thing to know it works..if its been dry for a while, it just may be a bad pump.

if it works, well, you should be able to at least hook up a temporary wire to the ignition or something like lights to help with theft if thats an issue...also, if you have an aftermarket alarm..i have one that cuts the fuel pump, and is just one more thing to check when this shit happens.

also..make sure you have gas..and no-one syphoned it while it was on blocks...really gotta be methodical.. and if you have done this, well, were here to help you get your post # up.

[evilm3chic]

who made your wiring harness adapter? Have you swapped the relays around.

do you have the wiring diagrams like on wedophones?

The husband made it and we've checked it with 8 different places and it all looks correct, he's pretty good with wiring I think that's why this is so frustrating for him...

wow, i don't want you to go over your post limit...after 6 years in membership, you have 8 posts...

and after the lots of Oral chime..well, that certainly relieves a TON of frustration, its still a matter of not running..

10-toes has it right though...1st priority is to ensure the fuel pump is good...jump that thing to know it works..if its been dry for a while, it just may be a bad pump.

if it works, well, you should be able to at least hook up a temporary wire to the ignition or something like lights to help with theft if thats an issue...also, if you have an aftermarket alarm..i have one that cuts the fuel pump, and is just one more thing to check when this shit happens.

also..make sure you have gas..and no-one syphoned it while it was on blocks...really gotta be methodical.. and if you have done this, well, were here to help you get your post # up.

I know the pump works because I had to replace it with the M20 right before I decided to swap it, its practically brand new. The car has been locked up in the garage so no one has stolen gas from it. We were as a last resort going to wire the pump up to a switch but my husband was afraid I would forget to turn it off when I got out of the car, which isn't out of the realm of possibilities. Thanks for all the advice so far

as for the post count... yea I signed up when I bought my M3 just haven't been to active

Also I just bought an E30 vert to swap the M20 back in the car if I can't figure this out so I'll either have a vert for sale so or a complete M50 swap depending on how this goes...

[evilm3chic]

Also wanted to add does this plug next to the ECU plug do anything? We assumed it was for the Auto transmission but we didn't know if we needed to put power to any of the wires, it doesn't plug into anything...