Kind of a stroker...

[arsevader]

I apologize, I just looked in the ETM and it that the "cylinder identification sensor", which is on the "i" but not on the "e", is an input to the DME.

I was told that it was only for diagnostic purposes by an older tech whom I trust very much; he must have just been thinking about another motor.

No need to appologize. It's a common misunderstanding.

[AdironRider]

Trust me, you need that impulse wire. Scotty and I both witnessed my car run like complete shit (to the point that we thought we might have misaligned TDC and had proper fucked the motor) with the #6 impulse wire broken. Absolutely nothing was done to the car other than replace the wires with new ones with a good impulse wire. Car purred like a kitten after. Point being you need the right set of wires. Whoever told you otherwise is mistaken.

If I remember right it has something to do with the firing order as mentioned briefly in a previous thread. Something about the cylinders fireing in sets of threes (some odd combination of pistons usually, but with no impulse sensor it just fires 123 456) or something of the sort. Memories kinda fuzzy as it was almost a year ago.

[arsevader]

Trust me, you need that impulse wire. Scotty and I both witnessed my car run like complete shit (to the point that we thought we might have misaligned TDC and had proper fucked the motor) with the #6 impulse wire broken. Absolutely nothing was done to the car other than replace the wires with new ones with a good impulse wire. Car purred like a kitten after. Point being you need the right set of wires. Whoever told you otherwise is mistaken.

If I remember right it has something to do with the firing order as mentioned briefly in a previous thread. Something about the cylinders fireing in sets of threes (some odd combination of pistons usually, but with no impulse sensor it just fires 123 456) or something of the sort. Memories kinda fuzzy as it was almost a year ago.

Not calling you an idiot or saying what you experienced wasn't true but you had a poorly running car and you replaced the wires and it wasn't running poorly anymore. That wasn't the inductive pickup, that was crappy wires replaced with good ones. Bad wires will cause all sorts of missfires etc. It is also possible an intermitant (not a missing) pickup signal caused some issues.

I'm telling you straight up that the sensor is not needed. I'm currently not running with one.

You are partly right about the purpose of it though. With the sensor input the motronic computer fires the injectors in 2 banks of 3 at a time. Without the input it fires all injectors at once just like on the ETA. In no way does this cause missfires. It doesn't on the ETA and it won't on the 'i'.

[Bimmerfanatik]

Interesting.

Fielding, it may have just been that we were warming the car up - does anyone know if this is possible? When we first started the car it literally sounded like the pistons were making contact with the valves. Nasty. But we had checked and rechecked at least 3 times the alignment of the cam belt, so I was certain it was something else. It was then that we noticed the sensor wire "donut" had been broken off. We tried getting it to stay back on, but with no luck. Again, the engine ran perfectly fine before, so to believe the wires were bad seemed a bit off. In any case, Fielding tossed a new set of wires on and the problem subsided. I do seem to recall the problem still happening when we first started it, even with the new wires, though - could be wrong.

In any case, it doesn't seem to make sense that the t-belt would need "warming up" - but it's the best thing I could think of. Once we ran it for a bit, with the new wires, the problem went away.