DanOKC

I'm megasquirt in progress, not there yet, but have read tons last year or so, I like the product design, looks good, & the weather here gets too cold for me not to have an IAC valve. I'm leaning towards stepper motor 4 wire type valves, simply because I've read of people having problems with PWM valves & megasquirt, & having a little experience with an M20 with it's 2 wire idle valve, it's probably OK for NA motor, but I want to go turbo later & I think a stepper motor valve may be better for that than PWM, IOW, I don't know that a PWM would stay closed as well as a stepper would under boost.

If the brushes are worn down or if one of them is not at the normal angle they sit at, that can also cause intermittant start. Replacing brushes or cleaning the copper part on the shaft they contact might help. If you can take a thin small screwdriver & lightly push on the back of the brush holder on either brush & it starts up, then that's likely your problem. But as mentioned before, lube the bushings & make sure it spins freely first.

for # 2 & #3 go to home depot, look around the window & door seal foam, you can get some thin about 1/8" thick stuff about 2" wide, for the heater doors, peal & stick, dense foam, this might sold as camper seal strip, for camper to truck bed. Then look for about 1/2" or 3/8" wide foam door or window seal strip for heater box sealing to body. Just a guess on # 1, maybe screws from under the dash or behind the panel hold it in place ?

MM or DVM or VOM or voltmeter, all pretty much the same thing. Digital voltmeter and MultiMeter are the basic electronics test tool for checking voltage & continuity, very useful if you can get the hang of it. If you don't have one, you can get one at almost any hardware store or radio shack, or your local electronics supply house. You only need a $10 to $40 meter for auto stuff you only do a few times a year. Put the black lead in the space on the negative terminal on the battery, set the meter to 20 V DC, has -- and dashed lines over it, not the ~ sign, that's the AC setting. It should tell you the battery volts when you put the red lead on the pos terminal of the batt. Now that you have that, keep the black lead on the neg terminal, put the red lead on the small wire going to the starter, have someone turn the key & see if the meter shows 12 volts, if it does, your starter could be bad. Also, a lot of starter/won't start stuff from long sitting can simply be corrosion around the bat post or bat cable end. Any good clean bolt to the body can also be used as ground to make measurements. A jumper wire with alligator clips on both ends make's it a one hand operation, you can clip the wire to ground & free's up one hand.

I'm no expert on cams, if you had a stock cam to compare, couldn't you just measure the base circle diameter with calipers while the cam is in the head & compare to a known stock cam ? Or do some regrinds build up surface by welding on more material ?

Yea it's a kit I assembled, it's not the hardware that's the problem, I'm just doing a loopback plug with pins 2 & 3 shorted on a db9 connector & you should see characters typed echo'ed back, like with hyperterm. It doesn't do that, so something real simple I'm overlooking. If I understand the software, it has a terminal window that is just like hyperterminal, so my loopback should work, but if that doesn't work, it will never talk to the display or the controller. I'm trying XP on my desktop machine with real serial port & using a laptop with vista with a USB to serial, & I get the same problem with both.

I can't seem to make the com ports work with there software, have sent 3 emails to tech edge & no response last 2 days. I've got loopback plug working just fine with Hyperterminal at any baud, I set it to 19,200 8,N,1. In there terminal screen on WBUtil & WBTerm, it doesn't work. This is on 2 PC's that work fine with hyperterminal, at any baud rate using a loopback plug to test. So I must be missing something, what is the trick I'm missing here ?

I've got a 318 E30 5 speed I just pulled from a parts car, you probably need the 6 cylinder 5 speed ?

Or combination cash & parts for M3 crank, or starter, I have motor/body/interior/electrical/AC/heater parts to trade.

45 years old My first car 1970 Datsun 510 Wagon in 1979 73 2002 in late 79 74 2002 in mid 1980 75 2002 about 1994 76 2002 about 1998 83 Ford Van about 2000 83 528e about 2001 75 2002 June 2006 Still have the 75's & the 528 & need to donate the ford Van.

I'm interested call me at four oh five 942-5766, thanks !

with or without all the misc bits, i.e. ground strap, terminal block, etc..

There is a small screen filter on the bottom of the fuel sender, it can come off & end up floating around bottom of your tank, it just snaps in place.

Been long time since I installed one, but I have 2, & all I remember is the plastic slotted disc is designed to fit onto the shaft one way only, you don't adjust that. But i do remember the little bracket with the adjustment screw part, if I remember correctly, the pic in the instructions show it mounted one way only, & you can mount it either way, so it can go to the right or to the left, that may give you the adjustment room you need to flip it the other way. I know once you have it set, if you pull the distributor & put it in another car, you don't need to readjust anything, just stab the dist gear a few times to get the timing close, then rotate the dist once it starts to set your final timing.

I've had it done at wheel/alignment shops, but only to factory spec because my car had kissed a curb & bent one. If you are brave enough to make your own tool like Pete mentions, please show us photos if it works out. The tool the tire shops use has a degree guage on it, & if they want 1 degree of bend, they push/pull the tool to more than that, say 1.5 or 2, then when they release, it comes back at 1 degree, is how it was explained to me. This is with the car on the lift of course.

Jumper across the 2 terminals on that switch & your compressor should come on, just to test the rest of the wiring to the compressor. The bulb needs to be in front of the evaporator, all it does is sense temperature, sometimes you can move it around to different location to get it to work better. The switch should "click" internally as you rotate it fully counterclockwise at some point, if it doesn't, it could be bad. You could check it with a continuity tester or DVM also.

I don't have an electric fan yet, so I can't comment on CFM's, but E30 & E28's use a fan with a relay across a 25 watt or 50 watt resistor to achieve 2 speed operation, so if you can put in an electric T-stat, you could have 2 speed fan operation. There are also aftermarket PWM fan controller boxes if you want to get fancier than just a relay & a resistor.

On the PVC part, I did test it buy letting it soak in a jar of gas on my back porch, I'd shake the jar every now & then, I just pulled it out & checked, fits just as tight as when I put it in there couple months ago. FWIW, I've had cheap white vinyl zip ties in the tank of my 528e for about 6 years holding a VW fuel pump in place, & they haven't failed either. Update: Got my Wideband installed today, using JAW vers 1.03 bd, I built mine a little different, in that I thought the Fan for the regulator was a bad idea, so I used a cast metal case & a TO-3 version of the regulator mounted to the case with a mica insulator & transistor cover, ( for the non electronic geeks, that's a bigger transistor package for the regulator, transfer's heat better than a TO-220, the stock part) it only runs warm to the touch, without a fan. I just bought the boards & the micro, I had almost all the parts in my repair shop already, I had to order the LED display he spec'ed from futurelec, his main supplier, couldn't find it anywhere else. I've used them before, really competitive prices, but they ship slowly via mail from China or Asia, somewhere where it takes 2 to 3 weeks to get your parts. I also used a 5 wire innovate 02 cable, instead of making my own 6 wire cable, to do this you have to measure the calibration resistor on the wideband sensor, then put that exact value as a resistor across 2 terminals inside the JAW box. This let me install a 5 PIN DIN socket on my JAW box, so if I ever have problems with the cable or the sensor, I can easily plug in a new cable, or a new sensor troubleshoot. To run the cable, I punched out the small rubber plug under the speedo cable & drilled the hole out big enough for the DIN plug to push through. My friend has my 60-2 trigger wheel & is cutting it to fit over the stock crank pulley, I still have to get a sensor for the wheel & fab up a holder for it. I will weld the sensor to the pulley instead of using JBweld. I have decided to go with MS2 vers 3.0 board, according to Bruce on MSEFI.com, it may be DEC before the sequencer is out, & I'd only see small increase in fuel efficiency at low RPM's crusing with sequential injection, so my current plan is to swap the MS2 ECU into my 528e when the sequencer comes out, but I may wait to see if they make the sequencer module to use as a plugin addon to MS2, either way, MS2 should work fine. For now I'm tuning my stock solex 2 barrel carb a little leaner, a wideband is interesting in that you get to see exactly how much leaner the car runs when you pull off the air filter. It was running about 12.4 to 12.6 at idle, & trying to squeeze better mileage out of the carb, so for now, bumped it up to about 13.2-13.4 at idle, just turned out the air screw. I'm surprised the wideband shows as high as 18 to 20 when you let off the gas at 2500 to 3000 RPM's for just a half a second or so. I also invested in a digital timing light that shows advance & will try to tweak my timing again after running a tank or two with the leaned out carb, trying to see what difference it makes on mileage. I spray painted one area of back of the crank pulley white & then put marks on there to make it easy to see from the drivers side of the engine bay on top. No more leaning over to see a little ball in the bellhousing, plus you know exactly how much advance at what RPM. I just set the motor to TDC, then sprayed the pulley, & reference that to a bolt on timing cover, I need to paint a line on the side of the cover. I can see my vac advance dist has about 25 to 30 degree total advance at about 2800 RPM. I want to know exactly what advance this tired old motor is running on with the dist, before installing MS2. I will run just ignition 1st, tune that, then after it runs good on ignition for weeks or months, install the 318i manifold & all the fuel bits. I'm probably going to run stock 318 injectors, at least at first for this tired old motor, but send them out to get rebuilt/cleaned/tested for $16 each, I need to do that to my 528e anyway, so I'll send em all at once.

I've seen rubber plugs that size in the local auto zone or o reilly's on the isle that has the misc parts blister pak Help parts or whatever they call them.

Been a long time since I did it, but I didn't break mine, I am pretty sure I had the whole quarter window frame removed before I pulled the glass out, I had replaced the rubber seal at that time I think, & the glass came out rather easy is all I remember.

Nevermind, found the factory manual on another site......

2002 used ? I just looked at it quick, looks like the same roll pin holding the ignition switch in, is that right ?

The internet to the rescue: Try this link for the factory ETM, has 98 & 2000 models, likely euro, but probably much is the same: http://www.gbnetwork.co.uk/bmw/downloadetm.html on the 98 etm, RT is red wire, look at power distribution 0670.2 , maybe you can find where it goes from that.

On the topic of door seals, Besides lowering the price to something reasonable, why can't they make them 2 part seals like they used to be ? The part that goes vertical with the thinnest part along the back edge of the door window always deteriorates 1st.

Yes, should be the same, it's just the plastic front & sides that are different, as far as I know. if it has a temp control & a hi/med/low fan switch w/off, it's the same thing.