New 1991 BMW 318is maintenance

[abdiel13]

Hello everybody I just recently bought a 318is. I’ve been reading through the forum and I am currently tackling the mess under the intake, pulled the lower oil pan and pulled the valve cover.

For the lower oil pan I found one bolt sitting

For the timing chain I took some pictures not really sure if it needs replaced.

For the mess under the intake all the hoses were cracked and dry rotted and im still working on getting them replaced.

If anybody has any more suggestions on other things to look at please let me know. Going for a good autox/track car.

[bmwman91]

Hard to tell from the pics, but the cam sprockets look OK at least. The real issues are usually related more to the guides and tensioner bits. The designs were updated over the years, and it is usually recommended to check+replace those if they are original...except, unfortunately those parts are starting to go out of production. What you will really want to do is pull the upper timing case cover and get a proper look, or if you have an endoscope / USB camera on a cord, you can try poking it down there and getting pictures. You can discern the old vs new guides and stuff visually.

If you are planning to run this hard, which is what track+autoX sounds like to me, then you will probably want to swap in an M44 timing case. All of the parts are still available (I think), it is a more reliable design overall, and it has a 10% larger oil pump. You need it, the case-to-block gasket, guides and stuff and an adapter to hold the crank position sensor. Metric Mechanic can probably sell you said adapter, since they adapted an M44 timing case to the engine they built for me and it has an adapter bracket.

Just in case you do not know about RealOEM, this will be your best friend:

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/partgrp?id=AF93-USA-10-1990-E30-BMW-318is

Wiring diagrams are here (the 1992 PDF has the most complete M42 diagram):

https://www.armchair.mb.ca/~dave/BMW/e30/

[roguetoaster]

Echoing the above, the lack of edge wear on the cam gears is generally a good sign for the rest of the system, but you do need to inspect further. The bolt is probably from the upper oil pan, and to reseal it you will need to raise the engine or remove it. Get your AFM rebuilt, replace your oxygen sensor, and test your crank/cam sensors, TPS, coolant temp sensor. If your current sensors are not in bad shape visually and test okay do not replace them as new units have been found to be quite problematic out of the box.

[downforce22]

to confirm, i ordered the Bosch equivalent CPS for ~$80 from FCP and it did not even start the car. This connector has a straight plastic connector vs the OEM right angle plastic connector. The Genuine BMW CPS should work and costs about $260. I cleaned my old one, stuck it in, and have continued using the original sensor.

[abdiel13]

Thank you all for the replies definitely some stuff I hadn’t thought of here. bmwman91 im definitely going to do some research on that m44 timing case once to see if I can acquire all the parts.

Roguetoaster forgive me for not being too savy but how would one test the sensors mentioned ?

[roguetoaster]

Thank you all for the replies definitely some stuff I hadn’t thought of here. bmwman91 im definitely going to do some research on that m44 timing case once to see if I can acquire all the parts.

Roguetoaster forgive me for not being too savy but how would one test the sensors mentioned ?

You'll need a quality multimeter, and you should have no trouble finding test procedures, or they are outlined in the E36, not the E30 Bentley manual. In any case you can easily find an excerpt of the manual online.

[bmwman91]

to confirm, i ordered the Bosch equivalent CPS for ~$80 from FCP and it did not even start the car. This connector has a straight plastic connector vs the OEM right angle plastic connector. The Genuine BMW CPS should work and costs about $260. I cleaned my old one, stuck it in, and have continued using the original sensor.

So I also bought the expensive OEM one. It used to be made by a company other than Bosch (as far as I can tell), but new ones are made by Bosch. However, they have the right angle connector and my car has run just fine with it since installing it. So, who the hell knows what the deal is there...

[downforce22]

It is sad that you can buy a whole m42 engine with working oem sensors for less than you can buy a new cps from bmw