Any updates?

 

gonna look at it today again. Girlfriend had it yesterday and it's hesitating a little worse, now. I have a backup fuel pump I am gonna toss into it as well as a new fuel filter. I have confirmed however at about 40-45 mph that the converter is locking up and I have all 3 gear changes and the extra "gear change" from the lockup.

EDIT: so what do you think of 245,000 miles on the original fuel filter. haha. That could be half the problem. rofl.

 

well fuel filter changed, TPS readjusted still have the pinging at higher engine loads and a slight hesitation when throttle is just open slightly at about 40 mph.

next on the todo list put that other fuel pump in which actually happens to be the original one to the car.

 

Maybe it's all them hills in Wilkes-Barre.

 

glad it's the easier, "cheaper" fix of the two. amazing things those tune ups lol

 

just a simple update, tried my "backup" fuel pump, and well it's no longer a backup, it didn't work. That thing got changed out first when a fuel pump relay went out. Turns out I guess the original fuel pump (my back up) burned itself out and took out the relay with it.

Still hesitates with part throttle between 60 and 70 mph anything under or over that it's fine.

Still pinging too though.

What's funny about this thing is it has an ignition coil and a distributor cap, but no distributor therefore no timing to check/adjust. It's all done by ECU.

Girlfrind making a 2 hour trip on saturday so I won't be able to look at it again this weekend either.

Pisses me off too, cus she wants me to look at this thing, won't take my truck to work so I can look at it during the week a little more than just 2 hours of light left in the day and then is not here over half the weekends. Then doesn't want to spend the money on the parts for it when I tell her it might be this and that etc etc. Even if it's from a JY.

To top it off, got a screw in one of the brand new tires last night trying to test drvie it again. Call up sears for their road harzard policy at 6:15pm (they close at 7pm). I ask them if I can take it up there for them to patch it up and he tells me they closed the shop cus they had no one to work it. WTF???? haha wait till I get up there tonight.

 

ok yet another update, and news of the weird. While driving with the girlfriend last night the tach started going all kinds of nuts. She had mentioned the other day at 60pmh the tach was reading 4,000 RPM. I thought ok maybe the tach was a little off for some reason, cus this motor screams at that kinda rpm and she would know if the trans had not shifted from 3rd gear. But had not seen it myself as of yet. Problem is kinda like this guy describes: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1106198

but it's not till the engine has pretty much warmed up and have been driving for a while. Not sure if it's related, but also running HIDs and had fog lights on, have not confirmed if it does this only with the lights on or off as of yet. Only issue I have though is with the tach itself, also erratic and going past redline to the mpg gauge etc. Also would like to add, since I have had the car the bulbs behind the tach don't work either, but i doubt that's related.

now here it is visual. (I wish I had my camera to get an actual video of this, but to put it in perspective, imagine the tach needle going past redline and going almost complete circle to the bottom of the gauge near the mpg indicator on the bottom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY1Zqv_c5Wc

I seen on http://www.bmwe34.net/Wiki/tiki-inde...ard+capacitors about the capacitor replacement, but not sure which ones are for the tach as it really doesn't go into too much detail.

 

ok I confirmed this only does this with the tach if the HID's are on. Girlfriend said the tach did not go whacky at all on her two hour drive during the day both times. But did do it at night with the lights on. Grrrrr WTF hahaha.

other forum thread discussion
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1106198

 

weird ... just a guess off of the top of my head then, headlight circuit is somehow causing a signal interfering with tach signal. Okay, that's really weid but not entirely. If someone's traced it back to the capacitors before that makes sense. The capacitors would be used to smooth out the voltage to limit interference (remember AM radio whine when wipers were installed and how it got fixed?) I'd go with that capacitor fix or figure out which wire going into the guage cluster is the illumination circuit, de-pin that one wire and see if it fixes the problem with the headlights on.

 

looking more into the cap fix it sems as though if they were bad that it would affect all gauges when cold. Not just the tach when the lights are warm.

http://www.bmwe34.net/Wiki/tiki-inde...ard+capacitors

Failure syndromes:
• Temperature, fuel gauges and LCD indicator not working when cold.
• Erratic functioning of the dashboard gauges and lights.

The problem with the tach seems to only affect us that have hids. In which you might be onto something with that interference though.

Not sure what this other guy means that his cluster LED freaked out. I am beginning to think that guy actually doesn't have the same problem as I am and he is just getting the same headlight out warning as me. Which is fixed by a resistor in the HID wiring to fool the computer that there is a light there. Since my problem recently started and the HIDs have been in some time now, I am not convinced yet this is what's causing the tach to freak out.

 

the HID system that I have in my newer runner uses the headlight socket as a relay. Basically plug and play and allows the ballast to warm up using straight battery voltage. It doesn't take much to flip a relay so the fix of adding a resistor makes sense. the ballasts in mine hum which suggusts to me that they're cycling voltages much like ballasts in flourescents (and cheaper cfls ... they hum in my house now LoL) it's possible that somehow, depending on the setup that they're bleeding back up the line and causing havok with the speedo which means adding a diode to prevent that sort of issue. Quick way is to "borrow" two conventional headlights and swap 'em out for a bit. I always carry to stock bulbs in the runner cause we had some issues with the kit (fuse holder contacts relaxed, took a while to find that one) JIC

 

yeah this kit came with the relay harness as well, however, the battery is under the back seat and it's a PITA to use the the jump connector under the hood for anything other than jumper cables.

I thought about disabling the hids for now but the halo conversion lights are H3, factory headlights are long gone and were 9006's. FOg lights are also 9006's so swapping the bulbs isn't gonna help either.

I did however confirm this does this without the non-hid fogs on.

still working on getting to the junk yard to pick up a few other parts to fix my hesitation issues as well.

 

On Your Order:
Part #: ARBB314102
1985 - 1993
BMW 535i Replacement Distributor Cap Distributor Cap 535i
Replacement
Qty: 1.00 Price: $ 34.55
Part #: REPB314106
1985 - 1993
BMW 535i Replacement Distributor Rotor Distributor Rotor 535i
Replacement
Qty: 1.00 Price: $ 15.33


Sub Total: $49.88
Shipping: $7.60
Handling: $3.38
Tax: $0.00
Core: $0.00
Discount: $0.00
Total: $60.86

 

Hey, I reread all the previous posts and one thing that I noticed is this. Is this car yours or is it your girlfriends car? I met this "cute" chick once who drove a BMW and dumbass me thought she was rich. Alcohol mess you up. The car was a piece of crap, I had to fix it so many times. She wasn't rich. I got her another car. Her house was junk too. I married her. Alcohol. A warning from the past.

 

haha live-in girlfriends car, we are not nearly rich, bought it from the original owner with a busted radiator from being overheated for $750, $500 later it was driving on the road, about a month later girlfriend hit a ditch with it and had to replace the subframe and upper and lower control arms. Another $300 fix. Since then we replaced the original shocks with Bilstein HD's another $500. Some other misc switches etc etc were replaced in it as well. Overall we have less than $2500 into it.

 

which really isn't bad considering how quickly these "luxury" brands can rack up a bill. That's not a bad bill you got for those parts there.

 

mostly autozone parts, the rad, aux fan switch, water pump and fan clutch all came from autozone.

The upper and lower control arms, and billies we got off ebay.

The HID/halo conversion, smoked corners, euro tails and projector fogs were off ebay and for the set it was just over $300. for all of them.

The sub frame came from a junk yard and I paid $25 for it.

 

Well, got around to finally changing the cap and rotor on this thing. Made a pretty big improvement in drivability. Hesitation and ping are still there but not nearly as bad as before. Cold idle still has a slight miss in it though as well.

At least now the engine responds much much better, but with a cap and rotor that looked like this I am surprised the thing even started. 245,000 miles on the original Bosch/BMW components.

 

Hows the rest of the ignition system components? plugs wires? what about all the tune up parts? when were the injectors professionally cleaned last?

 

plus were changed last spring, wires are good. Injectors, no idea.