New Daily Driver - 2001 BMW 325i

New coolant pipes are in! Plus a new VANOS oil line.

Cleaned up the intake, ran new vacuum lines, and put in new intake gaskets. The old gaskets were probably still okay, but new ones were dirt cheap so why not.

Went to hang the intake and discovered WATER in the #6 cylinder head port! The seal at the bottom of the windshield is shot so I guess rain just rolled down the glass and onto the open engine. Luckily #6 was on a compression stroke and no water entered the cylinder. I pulled the plug and checked for water but found nothing. So I vacuumed out ALL the cylinder head ports, misted them all with some MM oil, and put the intake back on.

Of course that also meant I had to put the fuel rail back on which was its own PITA process. BMW doesn't believe in slack for any connection. I almost went nuts trying to find the fuel supply line because it had fallen down by the transmission. My arm is still scraped up from trying to reconnect some random sensor at the back of the cylinder head that was part of the fuel rail harness.

Still have to put the throttle body back on and hopefully find all the things I unplugged. The wiring harness "squid" has to be shuffled back and forth like a sliding block puzzle, which is a PITA.

Another update on the world's slowest E46 water pipe replacement project. Unfortunately no photos this time because it was just a E36 M3 show of a day working on the car. The car it self was mostly fine, it was just one thing after another stopping progress. Having to pry the kids apart every 10 minutes when they start fighting in the yard affects productivity.

I appreciated BMW making the engine wiring harness pretty much only viable one way. I accidently swapped two plugs around, but caught it pretty quick. The hardest part was tracking down all the wiring harness plugs that I had disconnected months ago and forgotten about. Drove myself nuts things I had missed a vacuum line only to find out it connects to the intake bellows.

Almost blew myself up testing the fuel system. Apparently the connection for the fuel rail to the fuel hose is a bastard to seat. I didn't seat it well enough last month and it blew off when I hit the key. Gas pouring out under the car. I yanked the key, yanked the battery cable, and pondered the cleanup. Luckily I had a good 2" of tree pollen fuzzies under the car that did a great cat litter impression. Firewall pad was soaked with gas, so I put fan under the car and let it air out for a few hours while I repacked our camping gear.

I learned that there is a panel behind the intake that covers up the HVAC fans and is REMOVABLE! Had no idea. But taking it off make hooking the fuel line up SO much easier. I got it seated and Klaus fired up a little grumpy, but alive.

I still have to refill the cooling system and burp it to see if the heater pipes are sealed.

I did let scope creep take over a little. I removed and cleaned the seal at the bottom of the windshield. It is missing about a foot of rubber, but it resembles door weatherstrip from Home Depot, so I might try a DIY on it.

I also yanked all the plugs and cleaned them. All the crumbling vacuum hoses made the car run pig rich, so the plugs were nasty. I cleaned them all up just because. I also checked all the cylinder for water just in case the prior water incident was not isolated.

No leaks! Check engine light has come on a few times but I keep clearing it to see if the computer is just having to adjust to not having a zillion vacuum leaks anymore.

Next up: tie rod ends and an alignment. But for now I'm just enjoying driving it again.

I enjoyed reading your posts! I'm thinking of getting an older used car like a BMW M3 and getting it ready for the track. How much experience did you have with car mechanics before tackling this? I can change the oil, brake pads and even brake fluid, but that's about it. Wondering if I'm biting off more than I can chew. 

So on Black Friday I dropped $48 on this:


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XHMJBV9?th=1


And then another $60 or so on the installation parts:

Wiring harness adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007KPRIS

HVAC relocation bracket set: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BTSW3SS

A better double DIN bezel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WD3Y2V2

Radio antenna adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000329HEK?

Much hackery of the side brackets attached the radio (which does on include any hardware) to the new radio mount:

Then an hour of soldering with a crappy soldering iron:

Put that, in there. Should be straightforward.

Old with the old:

Yank the HVAC unit:

Yank the old radio/HVAC cage to open up the hole, put in the new lower bracket that holds the seat heaters/12v/HVAC controls now:

Everything screws in using the factory mounts, so it just all goes back together:

Finally I had to massage the silver dash trim above the radio to clear the weird mounting posts on the radio cage, but it fits now.



 

Great success! Now I have Android Auto, Bluetooth, and a much more modern feeling car. Total cost about $110 and about 4 hours of time all together. I didn't bother using the backup camera as I didn't feel like running the wire, but maybe I'll do it later.

These two video are exactly the same thing I did and helped me a lot with the mounting brackets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kagal4s9LGs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqAwtIFc-sM