My 1988 e30 325ix - Garage'd

[jeenyus]

I fixed the leak at the sleeve on the bottom of the oil dipstick guide tube.

From this.


To this.


To this.


No change in my idle, which continues to sit around 1k after warming up.

For anyone who needs the reference, it's a 15mm hose at the bottoms of the tube.

[jeenyus]

Been doing little bits here and there on the BMW. Let me see if I can remember them all.

I recently discovered an exhaust leak. It was on the original flex pipe coming off the exhaust manifold right before the o2 sensor. This caused the car to be loud af, but I wouldn't have known that because it's always been loud af. A mechanic pointed it out and I fixed it as soon as I could. Man does that make a difference!

It's not the most attractive weld, but it got the job done and didn't cost me too much.

Plus, while I was there the shop guys let me examine the bottom of my car which I feel is invaluable. I found two things!

First, most certainly an oil leak, and probably a vacuum leak too. Right at the bottom of the dip stick the rubber hose is leaking pretty bad. I'll have to fix it next Oil change.


I also (sadly) found a small rust spot that's eaten all the way through in the passenger foot well.



I also have the car's back end taken apart to freshen up the paint and remove the rear black stripe.

In progress.

At the shop still in progress.

And today, almost finished.

I ran out of paint mid-job so I had to wait till today to work on it.

Also replaced my throttle cable. Man what a difference that made! It feels so good now. Car is finally running well.

[jeenyus]

Why do you say the size is off? Too small? Too big? One common mistake with the install of the blower motor is the that they install the metal clip in the wrong spot behind the blower motor. The metal clip does not attach to the other metal clip behind the blower motor it connects to the plastic piece above that. It is hard to put into words but anyone who has done this job before knows what I am trying to say.

I know what you're referring to. It's actually the front clip i can't get to fit. Can't get it to hook onto the plastic, only the resistor which is wrong.

[rzerob]

Why do you say the size is off? Too small? Too big? One common mistake with the install of the blower motor is the that they install the metal clip in the wrong spot behind the blower motor. The metal clip does not attach to the other metal clip behind the blower motor it connects to the plastic piece above that. It is hard to put into words but anyone who has done this job before knows what I am trying to say.

[jeenyus]

Over the weekend I got the chance to work on the BMW a little bit. Getting it prepped for some paint on the rear end.

Cleaned up the exhaust tips.
Honestly removing the bumper on an early model is a pain in the ass. So many little bolts.


Like this rusty guy under the exhaust heat shield.


Exhaust tips before.


After wire wheel.


Rear end before cleaning for paint.


After removing a lot of the old white paint and rust.


Then I relaxed my blower motor resistor. Here they are side by side. It was ready for a change.

I ended getting OE Aftermarket blower motor off of ECS Tuning. It works great, but it doesn't really fit to be honest. I tried so many different things to get it to fit, no dice. Gonna try again when I'm less frustrated. Don't like spending 180$ on something that doesn't fit.


You can see in this picture the size is off.

I'll keep updating as I finish these projects.

[jeenyus]

Car has been running well lately. I replaced the valve cover gasket and took off all the shitty paint that was on there from before. It help my car stay steady on the idle, but I'm sure there is another leak somewhere, possibly under the intake manifold?

I received some goodies in the mail yesterday as well. A new blower motor to keep the air flow in my car and a new heating resistor.


All cleaned up.


Valve cover cleaned up, but still needs more sometime in the future.

I replaced some fuel hose as well coming off the pump, but still need to do another one which you can see in this picture (the lower one that's all saturated in fuel)


As well got some goodies for the Audi to upgrade the brakes to the larger b5s4 brakes. Pictures to follow.

[jeenyus]

Been a while since posting here. The car is running. I've been dealing with the same issues as before with the car having issues starting.

I've been convinced that my ECU/DME was taking a shit on me. I went to a local car meet and someone from the meet was able to give me a 179 ECU. I know this is for an M30 engine, but the idea of a working ECU was going to help me figure out if my car would run different, thus helping me narrow down the issue. Also the M30 uses larger injectors and mine are currently larger than stock...

I'll come back to this.

Earlier before I was able to get my hands on a 179 ECU I pulled mine to do a pinout test. A couple things came from this. One, I don't know how the fuck to successfully do a pinout test. Two, my car has an ancient Bavarian Autosport chip in it. I contacted Bav to see if they could give me some information on the chip. They basically laughed at its age and offered me a 20% discount on a DINAN chip.


What I ended up doing was taking the chip from the old 525 ECU and plugged it into the 179 ECU. This actually worked OK for a while till I realized it was no longer running OK.

This led me to purchasing the new 525 off eBay. It came with a stock chip and all seems well. Car is running great, EXCEPT, I'm still having issues with the car starting.

I keep thinking this is because of fueling. So I went to look at the filter and came across a kink in the hose.


Gonna have to go get some more hose and hope that extending the hose will remove that kink. I mean, it would make sense a kink would cause some starting issues.... right?

Here are some pics from the car meet I went to as well.

[jeenyus]

I was able to get a new head unit finally. The one I had in there was something the previous owner put in there probably back in the 90s. It was a DUAL and had the brightest blue light on the front I couldn't see anything other than it when driving at night.

I decided to go with a kenwood digital media receiver. No CD capability. It's a much nicer unit than what I had before. It's dimmable or you can turn the light of completely.




Another great thing that happened for me was finding out the ability to do a stomp test! I always heard only ECUs ending in 17X would allow this function and I have the one ending in 15X. I tried it anyway, just because I was at wits end.

Anyway, IT WORKED! I got code 1261 which is fuel relay for dme. I decided to replace both the main relay and fuel relay. And now, I'm coming to the realization that although I've thought my car was running great at times, it actually running right now. Sounds like harmony instead of chaos.

I'm going to say this solved my random startup issues I've been having for some time now. Lesson learned though, BUY NICE OR BUY TWICE. I bought these previous relays on eBay.

Tsk tsk.

[DrJosh]

Also needs some ix weaves and black door handles.

[ThatM20Guy]

Totally worth it. I used Vvivid vinyl and it's so easy to lay. The sticky part of the vinyl actually looks like it's designed to help air be pushed out in case it gets trapped. Good product.

Good to hear.

Glad the tow company is righting it. Hopefully it turns out all good!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bradnic]

Then it looks like eventually other IX rather than the oddball 1 year only non body color DB with late model sheet metal setup it came with. Why be ordinary? I'm keeping my 88 IX coupe as it came

[DrJosh]

This car needs some plastics

[jeenyus]

I got a call back from the car towing company. I guess they fired that guy... I'm a little bummed about that cause he wasn't a bad guy, but they apparently fired him before I sent in this message to them... so I don't feel responsible.

They are going to fix the tear in the frame and as well replace my blinker lens cover. I'll take it over there on my lunch this Friday to see what the outcome is. Either way, i'm happy with the customer service from this car towing company. I didn't expect them to be so willing to comply.

I hope that guy finds a new job.

[jeenyus]

Looks good! Thinking of doing the same

Totally worth it. I used Vvivid vinyl and it's so easy to lay. The sticky part of the vinyl actually looks like it's designed to help air be pushed out in case it gets trapped. Good product.

[ThatM20Guy]

Looks good! Thinking of doing the same