87 325e, difficult to start, idles good but all plugs fouled

[BundleOjoy]

Hello all,
I have a 87 325e that I got back in March and have been slowly fixing it up. PO said the car wouldn't pass emissions testing and I recently did the timing belt, valve adjustment, and water pump as he couldn't tell me when it was done last. Car idles just fine and honestly probably runs better than it did before but recently I started hearing a tapping coming from the drivers side front wheel well. I poked around and people said it could be from a loose spark plug so that prompted me to go and retorque them all but since I was there I figured I would pull all the plugs and check them. Every single plug was carbon fouled from maybe 10 miles of driving tops. Side note the car also has issues starting first thing where it takes about 3 tries before it will fire up. The 3rd time usually runs and idles like complete garbage at first then gradually comes up to 800ish and is stable. No really throttle hesitation and a little bit of black smoke shoots from the exhaust when I romp on it but that is about it. Does anyone have any ideas on where to look to next?

Any help would be appreciated.

[tomstin]

I would start with a compression test if only to verify its good. Next, check all the various temperature sensors with an ohm meter back to the ECU. Check the throttle position switch. Then I would move to the Air Flow Meter, check that with the ohm meter. Also check the O2 sensor. You may want to check the fuel pressure, if that's too high it may be overpowering the fuel injectors???

"tapping coming from the drivers side front wheel well" is a strange one as the spark plugs are on the other side of the engine. I would bet that noise is coming from the power steering or alternator on that side of the car.

Sorry, no easy answer. Verify all the systems are functioning properly is your only choice at this point.