New Jersey BMW CCA

I moved my E46 car Thursday morning last week to make room in the driveway for the horde of relatives. When I tried to start it Friday morning, it cranked but would not fire. My 325i continues to cement its place in my personal automotive history as the car that fails to start and/or leave me stranded more than all my other cars combined. Please note that the car is 251 miles short of a quarter million miles on the odometer.

Anyway, enough whining. The only stored code according to my Peake tool was a DM-TL (diagnostic module-tank leak) code, a very common code thrown with a loose gas cap. I yanked out the electric fan and installed an exhaust cam position sensor I had on hand because I have had those fail before with similar results: rough starting but no codes. The new sensor didn't help so I bought and installed a new intake cam position sensor. That didn't help so I pulled the plugs to inspect them and installed 6 new plugs (proper NGK 4 prong) as the plugs in there had more than 60k miles on them. The old plugs looked old but nothing looked too terrible. I also disconnected the battery for 20 minutes to clear any of those Siemens ECU gremlins, if possible. That did not help either and the only code I now have on the Peake tool is 19 7d which is for "E-fan". The fan is still on the floor of my garage so that code does not scare me

Here is a start attempt after the above work. If you turn the volume way up after the annowing seatbelt beeping, you can hear the engine sort of fire and see the RPMs pick up a bit on the tach. I optimistically released the key at ~500RPM at one point but the engine died. The engine felt very rough as is spun up to 500 RPM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de89jDeYUTM

After several days of looking at potential winter beaters on Craigslist, I retrieve my OBD2 code reader from a friend but it found no stored codes. I checked fuel pressure tonight with an old tire pressure gauge on the fuel rail schrader valve, a fire extinguisher, and a helper to turn the key. The pressure gauge pegged at 50psi

My next guesses are a bad crank position sensor and loss of compression. The crank position sensor is used on a bunch of engines in the US: M52, M54, S52. Anyone willing to loan me a good one for troubleshooting? The only BMW engine I ever blew up was an M30 that dropped a timing chain so it is certainly possible I did it again. I have a compression tester and will check the engine tomorrow.

Anyone care to offer guidance based on experience, specific technical advice, helpful suggestions, or wild guesses? Please label your comments with the appropriate category.

helpful suggestions that I learned from you:

A) Use the BFH

or

B) Get her ready for the car crusher




let me know if you want me to swing by and fetch wrenches tomorrow

The current plan for the touring is a final winter of daily driver commuting after which it will be the backup commuter/LeMons car. The two leading themes are Serenity or a Shelby Daytona. I already have 100ft of roll cage tubing and a full containment seat for the wagon.

Of course, this assumes it will start again.

image?

I was hoping to borrow more comprehensive diagnostic tools today so I ran a compression check to verify there is nothing mechanically wrong.

Well, there is a lot mechanically wrong. A couple cylinders were fine (well into the 100psi range) but it got uglier from there: 90, 70, 50, and 35. Since it started and ran briefly the last day it ran then didn't start the next morning, I imagine something broke internally and scattered debris across other cylinders. Perhaps the DISA valve pin dropped out at some point and finally made its way into a cylinder where it bent/broke something that created more debris.

I will try to keep the car around until spring when I could do an engine swap so it could live on as a track rat and LeMons car.

LeMons theme...?


Too soon...?

never too soon

edw1 wrote:I will try to keep the car around until spring when I could do an engine swap so it could live on as a track rat and LeMons car.

So... many... options....

M20B27 motors are cheap and usually in very good shape. I can see the t-shirt now: "Eta lyfe 4 eva". The Dodge slant 6 is also a favorite.


I'm probably picking up a lightly used Mazdaspeed 3 as the daily driver. Torque steer is fun.

I have an eta motor sitting in the barn. You're welcome to it and I'll even help you load it!

Neil

An E46 with eta power will certainly be accepted into any LeMons race AND receive favorable budget considerations at BS inspection.


Hmmm.....