jcerecke

So I got in my car the next day and tried to start it, steering wheel came down like normal and then when I tried to crank, all electrics went dead. Doors locks, all lights, everything. Wiggled the battery terminals and everything came back to life... so I think I need to give all the terminals and ground points a clean and then see how it goes. Thanks for the advice team.

Ahhh that might make sense that once every ~five times I start the engine it clicks like the battery's flat and then starts and all my settings have been erased. Brand new battery last year.

All the indicator lights on the cluster that tell me my lights are working (high beam/indicators/fogs)... don't work! But the lights themselves do work fine!! To make matters more complicated, ages ago my indicator "auto flick off" thingy broke about 6 months ago so I manually switch them off but could this be contributing?? Sometimes the internal indication lights works but then they can also stay on after I've switched the light off. I've noticed it on the indicators because that's what I use all the time, but also seen it happen on the high beams once. I can't get my reverse lights to come on when I'm in reverse either! The last thing is the backlight for the mileage display has been either not working or flickering when I go over bumps for the last year or so, but I doubt that's related?? Light module??

So I hired a scissor lift yesterday to do some work. And to get the thing into the building I reversed the trailer into some steps covered in plywood. forcing the back of the trailer up and consequently the front of the trailer (attached to my car down. When I went to start the car I could hear the pump trying to push the back of the car back to normal height but obviously they couldn't. It was only happening for about 10-20 seconds or so before I pulled away and when I got home I saw the back of the car was really high, but it was still attached to the trailer so I thought it would return to normal after I took the weight off. And in the morning I took the scissor-lift back but the car's still riding high at the back. When I start the car I can't hear the pump start any more... Any ideas?

Ok gave the corroded parts a gentle clean, and resoldered a bunch of points. Chucked it back in the car just dangling and it started up and ran fine for quite a while. Then somehow touched the key and the computer with each hand and got a shock?! Screwing the computer back into place (therefore earthing it) makes the car fail to start, but separated again and it starts and runs fine. Might've soldered two pads together that I wasn't supposed to??? I've double checked it all but can't see where I went wrong. I think I might need a replacement from you hotwire? Is there anything I could possibly check voltage wise with the wiring?

Well I'm inclined to take it back and ask for a refund. They can't charge me to make wrong adjustments to my car! Just wanted to make sure I wasn't being ignorant of some fancy lights that point in peoples eyes without being annoying.........

Took the e39 in to get a warrant at Jeff Gray who said my lights were out of alignment so they kindly adjusted them for me (and kindly charged me for it). But now my low beams are almost pointing straight up!! Ok that might be exaggerating a little, but about 100m down the road in front of me it's hitting the tops of trees and the roofs of houses. I always hate those guys that have their low beams flashing up in my eyes so I hate to think that I might now be one of them... is this right? The funny thing is the warrant before this they pulled me up on the adjusters being broken so I fixed them and adjusted them to what I thought was about right (pointing down in front of the car as far as I could without it bouncing up when I hit a pothole) and took it back in for a recheck and it passed without them saying anything. I tried to get a photo but camera/skill sucks in low light.

Ok, I might resolder some of the more corroded bits too and see how it goes. Cheers.

So I loaned my car to a mate who was driving it around in the rain and it just died on him. Cranks over but doesn't start. If you leave it a couple minutes it cranks over starts for maybe a second then dies. Sometimes it idles for a couple seconds down near like 3-400RPM then dies. Throttle does nothing to bring RPM up during these fleeting moments. Talked to Pete at Eurorec and when I mentioned the water he pointed me to the computer which I pulled out and held on it's side to see a whole lot of water run out of it........... I opened it up and while it doesn't look all that corroded, it's definitely started. Haha as a side note, I wondered what would happen if I tried to start the car with the computer unplugged and it ran for longer/better than it did with it plugged in but still died after a few seconds. L-Jetronic computer by the way. So really just looking for advice, I'm guessing it's not going to be repairable if it's water damage. Where should I go for a replacement computer and is it worth upgrading to Motronic?

Cheers Glenn, have taken it to Eurorec. PS that was a genuine typo...

Can anyone help with advice or a guide on replacing my bump stops? Failed my warrant today on them, apparently they're quite perished. I've never done any work on suspension before so be gentle! I don't even know where the hump stops are haha...

I've fixed my sealed lights. Both sides needed doing. Not a hard job, just annoyingly long. Didn't help that my oven was too small to fit the lights in, ended up using my flatmate's hair dryer haha. I'm happy to help you out Dave if you like. Also since you're an engineer, you might want to check this out. I didn't bother fabricating my own, just got a new set from BMParts. He had em in stock too.

Ok so after replacing that blue plug and the air filter it's not stalling any longer! Hoorah. But it was idling up weirdly. When it was cold it would idle at 1500 and then drop to between 1000-1200. It wouldn't fluctuate noticeably but maybe sitting at one set of lights it would be 1000 and then the next 1200. Even caught it up at 1500 while warm a couple times but not normally. And if I was driving along and put my foot on the clutch it wouldn't just drop to idle speed it would sort of drop to 1500 and then slowly meander it's way down a bit further. So I adjusted the idle screw and... now it's completely closed haha with the car idling at warm around 600. Probably not supposed to be closed though right???

Thanks mate, but mine's the older type that connects to the cooling system.

Yep, so after replacing batteries in the cluster and tightening the brass nut the temp gauge still doesn't move. Even after earthing that brown plug's connector. By "doesn't move" I mean when I turn the car on the needle jumps from resting position up a little bit to about halfway between resting position and the start of the bottom of the scale. Same if it's shorted to earth. Every now and then I see it jump a little bit up further into the blue when I'm turning the car off. Pretty safe to say it's the gauge? Since it's an '85 e30 there is no C191 plug to check, I'm guessing it's just hardwired straight through to the plugs on the back of the cluster. Just out of curiosity the cluster had three sockets on the back but the middle one (yellow I think) had nothing plugged into it. Should I be worried? Just took the car for the first spin after getting it to not stall on me, took off down the road, felt like it had more power than usual and as soon as I stepped on the brakes it stalled. Gave it another hoon and touched the brake lightly, no stall but it did stall later again just as I pulled into the driveway on my 1 minute run up the road and back down again.

Yeah saw the brown one too, the blue one was the only one that had two contacts. Brown only had one. But I've taken the cluster out and tightened the brass screw on the back which was loose and while it was out I've taken the SI board batteries out and just waiting for some new ones to charge overnight to see if that helps any.

Got the old thermostat out and chucked it on boiling water and didn't see it move a mm. So got a new one and cleaned the housing out, chucked it in and while I was in that area of the engine I also removed the blue plug and joined the terminals on the cable to check my temp gauge, turned the ignition on but it still didn't move so I just tried to start the engine and it spluttered into life! YUSS. Removed the bit of wire joining the blue plug's wires and it died, so plugged it back into the sensor and it all works now fine, so must've been the thermostat. But I've still got no heat in the heater and the temp gauge still doesn't work... Fingers crossed it's not overheating!!

AHHHH I can't believe I didn't think of that. The thermostat hasn't worked for a couple of months, wasn't sure if it was just the needle or what but I'll look into it, cheers. Yeah I've experienced lots of problems with the distributor cap too causing all sorts of weird problems.

Let me paint you a picture... So my 85' 320i has been driving fine lately but this morning on my way into town all of a sudden I slow down and stop at the intersection and the car stalls. Start it up and pull off without a problem, next intersection the same thing. Have to stop a while at this one so started it straight back up and it fired up but stalled immediately after. So I wait until the light is green, start it up and take off and basically repeat this process all the way into town. If the car's in neutral or my foot's on the clutch then it stalls and refuses to idle. Now this same problem happened about a year ago, and I left the car sitting around for about 4 months before bothering to fix it. I self (maybe not so correctly) diagnosed the problem to be either AFM or ICV so took both out and cleaned all the crap out of both and put it all back together replacing a cracked hose at the same time. And the car ran fine ever since. So on my way back from town the car ends up stalling and not starting back up again. I've had it towed back to my house and while waiting for the tow, I called up eurorec to figure out what an ICV will cost me (was quoted ~$450 for a new one elsewhere) and the guy goes "nah nah nah, it won't be the ICV, it'll be the TPS switch, it fills up with oil and craps out". So at home I take the throttle body off and open up the TPS, and fair enough it looks awful. Spray the crap out of it with electrical contact cleaner and clean the inside of the TB while I'm at it and pretty much get rid of all the oil successfully. Get out the multimeter to test the TPS and both idle and WOT switches are switching correctly at the right points. So I'm a bit lost... Do I go back to the AFM/ICV idea? Any other ideas?

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/car-parts-...n-462445164.htm Been looking for some roof racks for ages that are designed for the e39 roof rails. And they're reasonably cheap too (at the moment.)

All up (over about 4 years) I've spent about $3.5k on parts & some labour (learnt to DIY now) replacing all the bits that fail after 25 years on an e30 I bought for $2.6k.

Hrmmmm that's probably why I've found little to no information on a conversion haha. I was thinking I might add another IR eye in the back window and just parallel it up with the front one. IR's pretty simple so it should work.

Been doing some research on retrofitting the factory alarm to my jap e39 touring and came across a thread jochen started saying he was doing it. Tried to PM him but his inbox is full haha. Can anyone give me any advice? Is it worth it? There's so much out there on which years/models came prewired for alarms, but almost nothing japan specific. I don't hold out much hope that mine is prewired. Also does it matter I've got the IR remote (which I'd also like to swap for the RF one which I can't find any info on too!). Any pointers or part numbers or who to buy from would be much appreciated.

I've found another box while ripping everything apart that I think I can get rid of... "3 Media Group" or 65908385447 but I've stuck this into realoem and it didn't find anything. Also already gotten rid of the Jap telephone box thing. Still need to get rid of all the cabling. Can anybody confirm that a little box which has a tiny coax cable plugged into it, and then another line out the other side which goes into the window trim... is a FM aerial? Is this the diversity aerial setup I've heard about on other BMWs? Still no sign of any radio box or any other box that has a plug that looks the same as the dynavin harness.... stupid jap import.

Yuss another thing I can throw out. The cable is the exact same type of cable as the GPS cable (and connectors too) so that's why I wondered if it was. I'll test it with the dynavin out and see if it works. I've heard that on the android model the GPS antennae is quite picky as to where it will work. Prefers to be placed on a metal base. Not that pleased about having to dish out more cash! Is the loom just an extension cable for the existing small adapter loom? I couldn't find any connectors in the car that looked like the connectors on the small adapter loom. Do you think I could just extend one of the small ones? Or is there more to it then that? I thought the dynavin has it's own tuner (dual) so why does it need to connect to the stock one? Is it just using it as an input to the amp?When I end up replacing the stock amp, will I need this loom still? I will end up using the RCA outputs on the dynavin so what in the loom will still be needed? Sorry for all the questions! And thanks for the help!