GrandClam

Hi there My e38 has started not being able to turn the ignition cause the key barrel is broken apparently. does anyone know the best way to source a new key barrel? I'm currently contacting bmworkshop and they are looking into it but they don't sound confident. thankful for any insight here

i see so i can just get facelift ones and chuck those in. thanks for the replies here. have a good one.

all good thanks for looking. would a facelift version fit?

great thanks so much

standard type pre facelift The pic attached isnt my car but these are the headlights i need

Hey guys recently had a towball go through my righthand side headlight (right as in right from inside the car so the left hand side one if youre looking straight at the car) on my 96 e38 and need a replacement headlight. If anyone has one of these laying around id love to have it Looking forward to hearing from you

thanks for the reply. and what about the 850CCA spec? is that one also necessary? seems like the page you link doesn't mention that anywhere. I hear e38s are very finnicky with voltage and current and stuff.

Hey Guys So I have a 728I E38 and I'm wondering what the minimum battery requirements are. Everything online is saying e38s need the 110AH 850CCA batteries but most e38s are v8s and v12s mine is a straight 6 M52 motor and i can't find anything specific on that. if those requirements above are for the v8s and v12s then its probably a bit overkill for a straight 6 engine no? cheers for any insights here.

Second one i believe

ah yes the crank sensor was the other thing that showed up on google. $15 is certainly a lot more reasonable for a sensor than 200. thanks for the advice i will probably give this a go I assume by aliex you mean ali express?

Hi All This issue has been the bane of my driving existence the past year and I just can't seem to get a handle on what is causing it. A few bits of context that might help. firstly the Car ALWAYS starts totally fine when its cold. First thing in the morning I have never had an issue. secondly The Codes have been read at my mechanic and have noted a cam angle sensor (my mechanic said sometimes this can be a false reading and he was right we will get into that in a bit) Third about a month or two ago I replaced my battery and this issue went away / was severely reduced for about a month. to the point where i thought id fixed it but then about 3 weeks ago it came back. 4th I have now replaced the cam angle sensor and spent $200 bucks on it and it has solved absolutely nothing. These hard starts range from splutters and stuttering into just plain not turning over. When the car is running its a dream. there's no loss of power at all and it runs perfectly other than this issue. Can anyone help me here. all advice and insight would be greatly appreciated

Ah ok so it sounds to you like a battery problem. that could make sense as when I replaced the alternator the battery went fully dead as it was sitting for 2 months. I know that is surposed to be quite bad for them but i used a battery charger to get it back up to full charge and havnt had any issues with it since and then was a couple months ago. will check the connection today. perhaps some wd40 or some kind of connection fluid would help?

ok will do tomorrow maybe

Hello there guys. This isn't a desperate problem yet but I figured I'd better get out in front of it now before it becomes one. My 728i has recently been struggling to start but mostly only after its already been running (say i drive it somewhere then leave it to sit for half an hour or so then try to start it again) What will usually happen is the first time of the day I start it it will start no problem and then every time after that it will struggle. Either crank for longer than it should before starting or once or twice its failed to crank at all. I have never had it completely unable to start yet thank god usually it starts are a bit of struggling maybe 2-3 seconds. But a couple of times it has failed to crank at all and then after a few tries it starts up. Once its running absolutely nothing is off or weird about the car so its definitely just a starting issue. Any ideas what this could be? Its got a brand new alternator in it so I doubt its that maybe the battery or the starter motor? also had the crank shaft sensor replaced very recently as well so don't think its that either. This might have nothing to do with it but I did accidentally hit a curb just before this issue started. No damage to the car that I could see and it wasn't a major hit just mis judged where it was and drove up onto it at maybe 15km or something. your thoughts are greatly appreciated thanks in advance

Right I see. Well I don't think this car has much extra in the way of electronics that I can tell. I havent had it for that long but nothing jumps out at me as a huge power draw past any normal car. I will be checking the battery tomorrow so will have a look at the type then

im not sure i will check that. I heard liquid sloshing around in it when i picked it up so figured it was a sulfuric acid and lead battery?

Hello there. I recently had my old alternator die in my car and decided to order in a new one and replace it myself. I put the vin number of my car into realoem.com found the alternator, grabbed the part number and ordered a new one from ebay as there were none in my country. However something interesting happened when i started the replacement. On realoem it states that my car takes the 120 amp alternator and that's the one I ordered in however when I took the old one out it was infact a 14v 140 amp alternator with a completely different part number. i looked online and the general consensus seemed to be that if the alternator is made for the motor then it will fit (it does) and work anyway (it does). i start the car up using a jump start (battery is completely discharged from sitting in my storage unit for 2 a bit months) and it starts up fine then cuts out. There was very little fuel in the tank so i topped it up and now it will idle for as long as i want and also drives fine. I also put the battery on a charger over night and got about 12-14 hours of trickle charge into it aswell I checked the voltage of the battery while the alternator is running and its reading at over 14.4 volts which means the alternator is definitely feeding current to the battery but now the car has issues starting. I let the car idle for 40 minutes and then drove about 15 minutes home and let it idle some more to let the alternator build some charge in the battery thinking this would be more than enough the car splutters and turns over but has an issue starting fully. My question is this. does this seem to be a battery problem as it was completely discharged or is it an alternator problem? I don't know why realoem would tell me to get a 120 amp alternator (i have linked the url for it below for reference) if that was wrong yet there was a 140 alternator in there already. its possible someone put a beefier alternator in my car at some other point as it is 25 years old at this point and i know that is something people do. I will be putting the battery on charge again for a full day and see if that helps. interested to hear your thoughts. https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=GE22-EUR-07-1996-E38-BMW-728i&diagId=12_2076

Hello everyone and thanks in advance. I can't find any info about this online and I have a sneaking suspicion my expansion tank is on its last legs. The e38 728i runs a m52 inline 6 engine My question here is - Is there anything stopping me from putting an expansion tank from one of the e38 v8 engines into my cooling system chain? Is it too big? will it explode? is it too small? does it work differently from the stock one? I have access to a e38 v8 expansion tank and I'm thinking about replacing mine with it and I'm just wondering if this wont work. cheers in advance

To be more specific I can get all the way to the red led on the key flashing but then clicking the button that would make the central locking activate doesn't work. I have another key that I will try do this with as well but the key I have with me was working as a remote a few days ago when i got the car so i know for a fact that it works. Some people are saying that being in sunlight can be a problem for this? Also here are some pics of the rear view mirror and the dashboard where i suspect the RF receiver is. I have tried pointing the key at both to no avail as of yet. Thanks for all your help.

Hi there thanks tons for this but unfortunately this did not work.

Ah right! I knew something like that was going on. Thank you very much for pointing me down the right path here. The previous owner told me that the car was originally a Singaporean diplomats car so that makes sense it is of the Japanese spec. There is a little red bulb on the dash board under the rear view mirror I'm assuming that is the receiver. I found a few promising threads on different forums and this one where they talk about this exact issue but I still haven't been able to get it to work. I've checked the IR signal is being sent with my phone camera and I can clearly see it is activating the IR when I click either button so it can't be that https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1709378-How-to-key-program-my-E38-Japan-Spec I have attached a pic of the 7 series beauty here as thanks for helping. Hopefully someone knows this sequence for the 728I because I have tried the ones in these threads (as unbelievably confusing as a lot of the instructions are) and nothing yet. Possibly because none of them pertain to my specific model of bmw, I'll keep trying but help would be very much appreciated

Hello there. I recently acquired a used 1996 728i and it's great. I wanted to know what batteries to stock for the key remote so that when it goes dead I'll have some in the car I can just chuck in there. However when I took battery out it apparently unpaired it cause it no longer works as a clicker as it did before. I've looked up the procedure online with putting it in taking it out pressing the buttons and followed the instructions to the tee and it didn't work. One thing I have noticed is that in all the tutorials the keys have 3 buttons but my one only has two. I have attached a picture of the key so you can see what I mean. They keys in the tutorial have an unlock a lock and a boot button. Mine has only the lock and unlock. Could this be the reason it's not pairing and I have to follow a different procedure? Any help here would be really appreciated.