Unofficialbmw.com

[cmcon98]

After selling my E30 'vert last year, I've migrated to the E36 board, but I'm in urgent need of help in order to help a friend whose eta died on her while driving. Urgent because the car is now sitting in what will become a no-parking zone at 4 tonight.

She says the car started normally and drove fine for a few blocks until she stopped at a redlight. Then it stalled. She restarted it and it stalled again and wouldn't restart. She pushed it into a parking spot and walked home. She tried it the next day and it still wouldn't start.

Battery and starter are strong. I'm thinking grounds, main relay, fuel pump relay, fuel pump, flywheel sensors, distributor cap/wires/coil in more or less that order. I'm going to spray starting fluid into the air boot, and if it starts briefly, obviously we then have a fuel delivery problem.

Am I forgetting something? Any other suggestions aside from (let's hope not) skipped timing belt?
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Cirrusblau '88 325iC 5-speed
Cosmosschwartz '99 M3 'vert 5-speed

[85-325e]

Boy, that sounds an awful lot like the fuel pump. Ask her if she heard any noises that day or shortly before. When those suckers go, they falter for a while, and then just go. I don't think it's the flywheel sensors... they don't just die like that and unless there was a catastrophic failure with the clutch which could have damaged the flywheel pin, it's doubtful that's it. I would look to fuel delivery.

I believe that the fuel pump relay is the same as one of the other relays in that cluster and that they can be swapped, at least to get her out of that no-parking zone.

Skipped timing belt is unlikely but I suppose possible. In most of those cases she'd have heard a noise. Grounds are a possibility.

One other thing... this happened to me with Cosmo many years ago... I flooded the engine, and regardless of when I tried to start it, I couldn't get it started, even after leaving it for a day or two. I took out the plugs, cleaned them a bit, put them back in and started the car up...

Good luck and keep us posted.

I think you should get a tall water bottle, remove the gas line and put it into the bottle, then have her crank the engine and see if you have gas flow...

Hopefully, someone else will chime in here also...
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Cosmo - 1985 BMW 325e, Single Owner, 265,000+ ORIGINAL miles and still going strong! But now on the East Coast and the salt air corrosion is eating my beautiful car alive...

[dale]

First thing I'd check is the relays. There are 3, Main (5 prong), Fuel Pump and O2 (4 prong).
The car will start and run without the O2 relay, so try swapping those 2.
The main is different with 5 prongs, so try to find another.

There are 2 other weird problems I've seen that will stop the car dead, one was the flywheel pin drops off, and the DME doesn't get the timing signal any more. Up on stands you can remove the sensors from the bellhousing and look for the pin on the flywheel.
Other sudden failure I've seen was a friend stuffed his jacket into the glovebox, this overheated the DME and it failed after driving a few hours. New DME and it fired right up.

pictures of an eta flywheel

http://www.unofficialbmw.com/eta_flywheel/

If that chunk of metal falls off, which happens once in a while, the engine won't run, and the only fix is installing a different flywheel
Or you could weld a new chunk of metal into that spot.

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dale@unofficialbmw.com
sold in 2016
87 325 5spd eta

[cmcon98]

Well I wasn't able to get it going, but here are the symptoms. When you crank the engine, it starts briefly, then dies as soon as you release the key. I bypassed the FP relay and replaced it with another one, with no change. Almost seems like the engine is only getting fuel from the cold start injector, since it only operates with the key turned to "crank".

I know the FP relay would only get power if the main relay was working, but I wonder if the main relay has an internal fault that's causing the injectors not to fire.

Where are the grounds located that would cause something like this? I'm not an eta expert by any means, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Cirrusblau '88 325iC 5-speed
Cosmosschwartz '99 M3 'vert 5-speed

[dale]

Does the car keep running if you keep the key twisted forward in the cranking position?

It could be some corrosion on your ign switch that stops the fuel pump from running.

One diagnostic to try is put a 12V light right on the 12V/Gnd on the main pump, does the light stay on when you let off the key from cranking and the engine dies?
If yes, the pump only partially works, order a new pump.
If no, you're losing power to the pump.
Try bypassing the fuel relay so the fuel pump is always on, it won't hurt it.
Then crank and see if it keeps running.

Grounds for the ECU are over by the battery tray in the engine compartment, on the later ones they ground to a bolt on top of the passenger side strut tower.
If those are loose, corroded, broken, etc, you'll definitely have running issues.

[cmcon98]

Thanks for the tips. I had the car towed to my garage, and last night I got it to run for about a minute. It was somewhat rough and kept stalling abruptly as if the key had been switched off. Fuel pump runs and sounds normal, relays are good. After a while, it stalled and wouldn't fire again. I checked for spark and there was none.

I switched the two bellhousing sensors (they're the same) and still no spark. I'm leaning toward a bad ground or a bad flywheel sensor, and I'll check the flywheel pin, but I don't think it would have started at all without it.

When the key is in "on" position, the check engine light doesn't light, so I'll check the bulb, and if it's good, I'll bet there's either no power or no ground to the ECU.

Any further suggestions would be very helpful, and I'll post the cause when I get it running.
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Cirrusblau '88 325iC 5-speed
Cosmosschwartz '99 M3 'vert 5-speed

[85-325e]

As I said before, pull the plugs and take a look at them...
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Cosmo - 1985 BMW 325e, Single Owner, 265,000+ ORIGINAL miles and still going strong! But now on the East Coast and the salt air corrosion is eating my beautiful car alive...