2mAns Daily Driver Thread - who knows what it is today...

[2mAn]

This past Friday night, I thought let me give this Drive Cycle another shot... its not that easy to do living in Los Angeles. Even at like 10pm theres still a decent amount of cars on the road. I think Im going to hand this off to a shop that has a dyno that they can leave the car on overnight and run the cycle with no outside distractions like stoplights, people, cars, etc...




Annoyed about that, I decided I would work on another small project. Car came with the US license plate holder, but not installed. Not planning to install it, I purchased the plate delete panel from ECS for all of $20 along with a few other small items for the car when I first arrived home. I immediately sprayed the new trim with some SEM Trim paint and installed it. However, it didnt match the trims surrounding it so this was something I wanted to do. Its also not centered so that will annoy me ...forever...









After being annoyed with the Drive Cycle not working (Cats are still "Not Ready") I spent some time masking off the front of the car and prepping it for paint, which I did Saturday morning.









After pulling the blue tape off, it actually took some paint from the center trim... *sigh* ... I guess thats how things will go for this car. 2 steps forward and 1 back haha

[2mAn]

Well, its been nearly a month and most of that month the car was at a shop who I asked to do the Drive Cycle on their dyno and then smog the car. Bada Bing Bada Boom...

HA! Cant it ever be that easy for me?.... That yielded nothing and they spent the next few weeks trying to figure out what was going on. They scoped the O2s and they were all reporting properly, they verified the cat was doing its job, but they did find a leak on the intake side of things so they fixed that for me. They drove it around (nearly 150 miles!), no SES/ CEL light came on, another Drive Cycle on the dyno and again, Not Ready. Frustrated I listed the car for sale LOL I still had some things to do on the car, and it was nice being reconnected with the car after all that time...

Recall that I bought the antenna adapter while the car was away and I figured I should install it and the Tan All- Weather Mats I bought on the E46 Fanatics classifieds. Quick install and it fixed the Radio problem. Yay!







I also sent a message to George Hill (on E46 Fanatics) and asked if he could guide me on the right path. He gave me some good things to look into, but ultimately it points again to the ECU & Tune. Im going to try and get this done because working on the car, sitting in the car and driving it around yesterday made me really want to put the effort into keeping it. Add to the fact that all of the other options Im considering for a car to replace this with are quite disappointing. Theres a reason I sent money to this guy and jumped on a plane.


TLDR; Im not quitting yet.


While here, I might as well post one of the pics I took yesterday for the FS ad. Just got a new iPhone 12 Mini and the pics are pretty damn nice, other than the idiot clicking the button.

[AWDBOB]

My coveted Forester XT is slowly growing to be a piece of shite, and I look for good manual daily hatch/wagon options constantly. The results of my searches are dismal, and I’m far too cheap to buy a new car.

Your recent purchase has my wheels turning..... car is looking good!!

[mike.bmw]

E46 manual wagon! Don't get rid of it! Looking good.

[Staszek]

Please dont dump that car! Its too nice. It makes me miss my E46 so much.

[mjweimer]

My coveted Forester XT is slowly growing to be a piece of shite, and I look for good manual daily hatch/wagon options constantly. The results of my searches are dismal, and I’m far too cheap to buy a new car.

Your recent purchase has my wheels turning..... car is looking good!!

I know of a sorted red/grey facelift RWD Touring (MY2002) that might be on the market soon. It's an auto but the 5MT swap is not hard...TX car so no rust. I always knew you would start to come around.

[2mAn]

Small update from the weekend. Ive started doing some investigating work that some E46 Fanatics have me doing. Things I've learned so far:

-It appears to be the original ECU


-These weird mods in the ECU box were the automatics connectors and the two isolated wires are for the reverse lights





-It has purple injectors, so these are the M54 units?






The Good News is that it overall does appear to be a fairly well done swap and there were no smog failures listed on the CA DMV Page, but the Bad News is that I have made zero progress towards having all monitors ready to go to get a passing smog.

[Northern]

weird that it's running on the 323 ECU still...

[2mAn]

weird that it's running on the 323 ECU still...

(I'm learning) I believe the thinking behind this is that my car runs a MS42 which is Drive by Cable still and they would need to convert it to MS43 (Drive By Wire) to use the ECU. I think this actually is better because the BAR apparently recognize the VIN on the ECU, at least that's the problem with my MR2. I prefer drive by cable anyways. I plan to drive out to meet a knowledgeable E46 enthusiast later this week and he will see what's going on with the tune, and hopefully can correct it... and if he cant, well... who had their money on 3 months?

[FrankKnox]

(I'm learning) I believe the thinking behind this is that my car runs a MS42 which is Drive by Cable still and they would need to convert it to MS43 (Drive By Wire) to use the ECU. I think this actually is better because the BAR apparently recognize the VIN on the ECU, at least that's the problem with my MR2. I prefer drive by cable anyways. I plan to drive out to meet a knowledgeable E46 enthusiast later this week and he will see what's going on with the tune, and hopefully can correct it... and if he cant, well... who had their money on 3 months?

Good luck in this difficult task, let's hope that he still cope.

[Northern]

I like the idea of drive by wire for smoothing transients and traction control, but it's a shame that OEMs have to take what should be a good thing and make it absolute garbage.

[2mAn]

Met up with a Moderator/ Expert from E46 Fanatics today. Copied his comment on my other thread here...

OP spent some time at my house today and I put it through the paces.

It’s an M54B30 with all the M52TUB25 peripheral parts bolted on.

It runs super smooth with near 0% fuel trims.

Pre-cat O2 sensors are new and switching healthy.

Post-cat O2 sensor voltages start at 0.42V at start up, then plunge down to 0.06V and stay there. So I think that is where the problem lays.




The MS42 DME had been flashed to 328i software back in June, then curiously flashed to 323i software in July.

We weren’t sure if it had a tune or not, so I programmed the DME back to factory 328i software as per this link.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=AM53-USA-02-2000-E46-BMW-328i&diagId=12_0897[/URL]




Something is up with the cats (could they be hollowed out?) or the post-cat O2 sensors to just bottom out with their voltages, even at fully 98C running temp. I usually see 0.75-0.78 volts when fully heated. I double checked the values with both INPA and OBD Fusion. Interestingly, BMW Scanner 1.4 doesn’t display live data for MS42.




Everything about the engine seemed just fine, except the post-cat O2 voltages, so at least I eliminated a lot of possible issues. Time to get it up in the air and inspect sensors and cats.

I owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to this man, Scott. His willingness to spend time helping a stranger is what this world needs, so its great to know a person who does that.




Since leaving his place I did about ~50+ miles (probably more, Im a little exhausted from the long day, drove over 200 miles total!) but Im... happy? ... to report that no SES/CEL has illuminated and the car is driving as good as it has been. Im going to relax for the rest of the day, but tomorrow I am getting under the car and will be inspecting those post-cat o2's , I will knock the cats and if there is any kind of hollow noise, I will pull the exhaust apart and try to see whats going on up there. I'll send the DAPO a text and ask him about the cats also, who knows maybe I will get a response lol...




Im just happy we have eliminated many questions and I have some focus on potential issues.




Also, while I was in the hatch looking for a flathead I noticed a bundle of wires that was previously plugged into the CD Changer, and saw some funny, non-OEM looking stuff and uncovered this ... thing... anyone know what the heck it is?









Assuming this car hangs around, I plan to buy a BlueBus and plug it in, but Id also like to eliminate any funny business, and this looks like funny business...

[Staszek]

Assuming this car hangs around, I plan to buy a BlueBus and plug it in, but Id also like to eliminate any funny business, and this looks like funny business...

Glad you got help, I spent many years on E46fanatics, while they had a lot of wheel and angel eye threads they also have a ton of informative stuff and some really knowledgeable members.

As for that pic, thats an Aux adapter, I believe that one takes the place of the CD Changer. You dont need it, I remember you saying you had the upgraded CD43 so you can add OEM Aux connection.

https://www.blitzsafe.com/catalog/2002-2005-conv-2006.html

[2mAn]

Last night I did another Drive Cycle and no changes.... pretty fed up with this thing. It shouldn’t be this hard. Everything looks correct but can’t get over this final hurdle.


Crawled under the car to see if anything looked funny with the o2 sensors and they look brand new, just like the top. Nothing strange happening down here either.







Not sure I have any patience left for this...

[2mAn]

Mini Update: I reached out to the BAR because theres a program that Im trying to take advantage of. Basically with the failed smog and the subsequent work done, I can get a one-time pass on the smog. I still have to take it in and get another failed smog but once thats done I can take all my paperwork to the Referee and I will get the pass. Good news because I can finally register the car in my name, get my tags and kick the can down "2 years" which technically is only 1.5 years away at this point... so thats good at least