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Just because I can't leave things alone, I decided to try out a few things that have been bugging me. First there's my rough idle. I can't think of anything else to check except my Idle Air Controller. I have taken this out before to make sure it wasn't frozen shut. Also, I have disconnected it while running and noticed that it'll idle faster when disconnected. That tells me it's not completely busted, but still, I have a rough idle and my idle seems fast at between 800-1000 rpm. So I took it all apart and cleaned everything I could reach. I made sure the part inside was moving about, I sprayed MAF cleaner and moved around the plunger thing. Cleaned the throttle body very well and then assembled it all. It seems a bit better, but only the driving over the next weeks will tell for sure.
Next, I've always thought my car's rear could be raised a bit. I've got Bilsteins in the rear that has an adjustable clip that can go in one of 6 positions. When I installed the HR springs, I chose the "middle". The car's stance is dead flat. I wanted to see how it looked and felt if the rear was raised a bit. I have put this off because it was such a pain the remove the shocks just to adjust it. So, I had a hairbrained idea. What if I could adjust this while the shocks were still on the car? I tried spring compressors, but there was no way I could compress enough of the spring to make it work. After much futzing around, I had an idea.
I put the car on jack stands, removed the wheels and used the floor jack to compress the suspension.
Then, I took 2 similar lengths of wood and fit it under the lower sprint retainer. Slowly, I dropped the hydraulic floorjack and let the wheel down. When the lower sprint retainer hit the wood, the shocks kept dropping revealing the adjustment rings, while the wood pieces held the spring in a compressed state.

In hindsight, this may not have been the safest way to do this, but it was sure a heck of a lot faster! Now I need to take some pictures of this new height and see if it makes much of a difference. Fast forward 12 hours or so... I took some pictures and added this photo. Hm, it's not so obvious in these before (top) and after (bottom) pictures.
This coming week, I'll drive the car to work and see if I can feel any difference. So, that's what I did this weekend to the car.

Finally got to the exhaust hangers that many of you pointed out were less than ideal. Pretty easy to change with a floor jack. Using a floorjack, it was pretty easy to take the tension off of the old hangers to slip them out. Here's a shot of the new exhaust hanger in place. I don't know why, but when I'm under the car, I just take pictures. Look carefully and you can see both of the new hangers in place. Another item to strike off of the To Do list. That's it for this weekend.

I love Cali cars. So clean compared to our Northeast salt suckers. It even takes a few weeks of spring rains to scrub the streets to where it is safe to bring the garage queen out of hiding.
--Ken

sansouci wrote: ↑Tue Feb 27, 2018 10:36 pm I love Cali cars. So clean compared to our Northeast salt suckers. It even takes a few weeks of spring rains to scrub the streets to where it is safe to bring the garage queen out of hiding.
--Ken

Yea, I count my blessings. I drive this car rain or shine. There's so little rain in Cali these days. It's almost always dry - although it's raining right now.
I have never cleaned the bottom of the car (except around the engine compartment) since I bought it over 2 years ago. So the condition you see at the back and forward to the engine compartment has never been cleaned by me! I'm kinda amazed it's as clean as it is.

Why didn't cars back in the 1980's have decent cupholders? I found myself pondering this problem as I was balancing a drink between my legs driving the e24. These past few days, I was on the search for a solution. I came up with 2 of them.

First was a natural idea. I meant to put it on the console, but I realized that it wouldn't mount correctly. So I relocated this fold-up holder to the driver side door. I am not fully trusting of how secure this would be over time with a large full drink. You see, it's secured by double stick foam tape. I could screw it, but I don't want to damage the door-card. Update note: 7/11/18 - I put a coffee thermos in this holder on a "hot" day. That would be 85 degrees in California. I parked the car for the day in the morning. Upon my return in the evening, this holder had fallen off the door. Basically with a load on it and slightly elevated temperatures, the double sided foam tape did not hold.

Before I got a chance to use the holder above, I was in Autozone and I came across a unit that would fit in the slot between the seat and console. Although it's a bit big with room for 2 cups and a smartphone, I liked the way it sat perfectly level when installed. So I thought I would give it a go.
Here's a picture from the driver's side. Since I am the only one in the car 95% of the time, this was an important view. I have used the console holder once and it's fabulous. I wonder how it'll fare when there's an actual passenger. Only time will tell.
Now, I have a feature that modern cars all have - way too many cupholders!

We have a couple of those folding cup holders on our model railroad layout, but we didn't trust the double-stick tape, and screwed them to the facia. I'd never thought of using them in the car!

I have the exact same console cup holder in my E30. Works great. It's been in there for several years and hasn't cracked or otherwise deteriorated.

So I have been battling a rough idle. Looking at the Bentley's book, it said that this could be caused by bad injectors or injectors seals. Since I don't think this car has ever had the injectors serviced, I thought I would give it a go.

Of course, when I took off the fuel rail with the injectors, I couldn't leave well enough alone. The fuel rail had a bit of corrosion and I wanted it to look better. So, here's a before and after picture - although this is getting ahead of myself here. The lower picture has the rail refinished as well as the injector rebuild completed. Here's a bit more of the process. As expected, the old injector tips and o-rings were very dirty. I picked up an ultrasonic cleaner from Harbor Freight and after disassembling all of the injector o-rings, spacers, and removing (destroying) the old caps, I dropped the parts into the unit with a de-greaser cleaning solution. That's the green stuff in the upper left. After a few minutes, the injectors came out pretty clean, although the injector body had a bit of corrosion. This wasn't a shop stopper. Installing the new filters and pinter caps was tricky. I ended up using a clamp to press the caps back onto the injector. Before rebuilding I had to make sure the injectors all worked well. I saw this trick from a guy on YouTube. You get a wheel valve stem and take out the Schrader valve. Drill a hole in the cap and slide the red spray tube from the carburetor cleaner into the hole. Heat the end a bit to make it swell and then pull it into the cap. What you get is the ability to use the valve stem to create a seal so that you can spray the carb cleaner into the injector.

Now, we need some power to activate the injector. I used my emergency jump battery with cable clamped to some speaker wire I had laying around. The ends happen to fit nicely on the injector leads. So what you need to do is press the carburetor cleaner and then energize the injector to see if the pattern it sprays is strong and even. Of course, this also cleans out the injector. Here's a video of the setup in action: https://photos.app.goo.gl/RzlJkHj8o9ucHxpt2
It worked a charm and I was able to test and clean all my injectors. They were all fine.

Now none of these endeavors ever goes completely smoothly! When disassembling everything, my flywheel position sensor crumbled at the connector! Luckily I had a spare in the trunk. So, I had to jack the car up and install the new sensor. That was another 30 minute distraction.
Finally, I got it all together. Here's a shot of the engine bay with the nice new fuel rail - of course you can barely see it in all it's gold glory! After that, it was time for a startup and test drive. So did it fix my rough idle?
Honestly, I'm not sure. I can't say it was silky smooth. I'll commute this week to work and reserve judgement after a few days.
At least I know I have super clean injectors and my fuel rail looks cool - even though you can barely see it.

Very nice work, I did that job a few weeks ago. Injector cleaning in that way works a treat and the painted fuel rail is a big improvement...especially in anodised gold colour.

randall977 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:07 am Very nice work, I did that job a few weeks ago. Injector cleaning in that way works a treat and the painted fuel rail is a big improvement...especially in anodised gold colour.

It was fun doing this service. It's the first time I've done an injection service. I learned a few things, but I am sad to say that my rough idle is still present. This morning was real "lumpy" and even after warmup I can feel a little lumpiness.

The gold color was an accident. I was really trying to get the zinc coated patina and the gold was the closest I could come to it. Now I have a can of gold engine paint. I'll have to think of more things to make gold!

I'm too lazy to read through your thread again :) but have you done a valve adjustment?

Otherwise maybe ignition. And look again for vacuum leaks. I think.

It's always the last place you look!

Cheers,

Ray

raykoke wrote: ↑Mon Mar 12, 2018 10:45 pm I'm too lazy to read through your thread again :) but have you done a valve adjustment?

Otherwise maybe ignition. And look again for vacuum leaks. I think.

It's always the last place you look!

Cheers,

Ray

Haha, I know what you mean about taking time to read through a long thread. My valves were done when I had my head gasket redone. It's much quieter than before.

When you say, maybe ignition, what do you mean? That's pretty general.

As for vacuum leaks, I'm always on the lookout for those, but as far as I can tell all tests are inconclusive at this time. Of course, I also don't know all the possible leak points. I check them as I hear about possible areas. So far, nothing has been found and all the "dipstick" tests, etc. all check out ok. So I keep searching.

Oddly I feel like I have asked you that before in this thread, but I can't be bothered to check

For ignition, I mean distributor cap, rotor, spark plug cables.

Do your plugs look okay? What are you running? I know M10s don't like platinum plugs. Not certain about your motor.

Cheers,

Ray

So I've been running Denso plugs since before my head gasket replacement. I've been having rough idle issues and had read that Bosch WR9LS were the proper plugs for the car. On a longshot that the plugs would make the difference, I decided to replace the plugs. This would also allow me to see the condition of each plug. So, here's what I saw.
Yeah, all the plugs look fine. Good news is that it appears my engine combustion is all in good condition.
Also, I discovered the removing the air cleaner and mass airflow sensor sure makes changing the plugs a lot easier. Such easy access. I also checked my rotor and distributor cap. Everything looked fine there. After all this, I started the car up and again, I can't say a lot has changed.
Well, this week I have new plug wires coming. If that doesn't fix the rough idle, I may be taking the car back to my local old BMW shop.

You have no MAF :)

Clean the track on your AFM with an eraser.

Cheers,

Ray

Couldn't your idle problem be the green control unit in the glovebox going bad?

raykoke wrote: ↑Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:18 pm You have no MAF :)

Clean the track on your AFM with an eraser.

Cheers,

Ray

Oh sorry, I called it a MAF sensor but I knew it was a AFM.
However, I don't know what you mean by cleaning it with an eraser. What is the "track" I am to clean?
Thanks in advance. I'll try anything right now.

tschultz wrote: ↑Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:39 am Couldn't your idle problem be the green control unit in the glovebox going bad?

How does one go about testing that, besides having a known good one to swap out - which I don't have.

songzunhuang wrote: ↑Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:07 am

raykoke wrote: ↑Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:18 pm You have no MAF :)

Clean the track on your AFM with an eraser.

Cheers,

Ray

Oh sorry, I called it a MAF sensor but I knew it was a AFM.
However, I don't know what you mean by cleaning it with an eraser. What is the "track" I am to clean?
Thanks in advance. I'll try anything right now.

Here's your can of worms :)

https://www.ericthecarguy.com/kunena/co ... ean-fiddle

Looks like Eric the car guy got bit by the PB snafu as well

Song, cleaning of the track refers to where the wiper arm constantly goes back and forth in an arc pattern, which can carbon track over time

Here's a photo, along with a PDF document describing AFM function and servicing

Lovely work. How's the Sugru holding up?

LandShark wrote: ↑Thu Mar 22, 2018 8:00 pm Lovely work. How's the Sugru holding up?

Pretty good. It’s not shrunk or separated from the edges of the crack. When I have more time and there’s not a higher priority, I’ll try and fill in all the cracks on my dash. Perhaps I can lose the dashmat.

The next step of my ongoing attempt to resolve a rough idle. I had a few new parts come in and I wanted to record it here.
First was the upstream O2 sensor. Now, I know that it doesn't really do anything to the cold idle since it's not kicking in until it is up to temperature, but I figure it can't hurt to change out since I don't know when the last time it was replaced. I didn't find anything alarming here. It looked like pretty much normal wear and tear for an O2 sensor. As predicted, this didn't do much for the rough idle. The car seems to run about the same.

Next came the new plug wires. I got ones in a loom labeled BMW, just like OEM. These were made by Karlyn and were all black. I kind of liked the blue ends on the old ones in my car better, but who knows how old those wires are. I noticed that the new wires seem to be longer than the ones in my car. Here's a look side by side. Sure enough, when I installed, the loop of the wire was significantly more than before. This kind of bugged me, but I guess it doesn't affect function. Finally, there was a bit of confusion about the plug wire order on the distributor. I looked on the web for a picture of plug arrangement on the distributor cap. I came across what I thought was a pretty well laid out sample (picture on right). However, I noticed that it did not match the firing order that is cast into the valve cover. Was the reason my car was idling rough because someone had installed the wrong plug order on the distributor cap? I decided to try and install the "proper" order by reversing #3 and #5 as listed by the picture on the internet. When I started the car, it was SUPER rough. Clearly, this wasn't right.

So I swapped #3 and #5 back to how it was originally. Here's the correct order. Now, the car seems a bit smoother. Again, I withhold final judgment until after a few days of driving. The adventure continues.

This is interesting, I will need to check it also to me. I have some issues these days with my car.

You're very good at maintaining your 6-er, I love reading your write-ups so keep it up!

I haven't been doing a lot to my car except driving it. That doesn't mean that stuff hasn't been happening. Since the last posts, four things have happened to my car and one thing hasn't changed.

First, what hasn't changed. My idle is still a bit rough, but the engine is smooth once I get past 1,100 rpm or so. So most of the time I'm ok, but when sitting traffic it feels rough. I can't figure out what to do with this anymore, so I just moved on.

Second, I wrapped some of the wirings on the driver side headlight. The old stuff was deteriorating and I fixed it up. Third, I had a mishap that cost me a rim! While driving over a mountain pass, I came upon a rock slide in a right hand sweeping turn. I couldn't avoid the rocks across the road and I ran right over a good size rock. I quickly lost air in the tire and pulled over. To my surprise, there didn't seem to be any tire damage, but when I took off the wheel, I quickly saw what happened. Yikes! I don't this is repairable. The tire seems ok and I just had to locate a new wheel. Luckily after 2 weeks, I found one for sale about 70 miles away from me. I picked up my new wheel this weekend. Now I just need to get the fairly new tire on the new wheel so that my tires can all match again. Also I had to adjust my tie rod as the car was pulling left a bit after this incident.

Quick note, I used the stock tire jack to change the tire but it created a dent on my car! When I was cranking the car up with the jack, the leverage of the jack caused it to push into the lower part of my car door. It not only left a dent, but it also caused the trim strip to come off. I had to replace a broken plastic retainer. Such a pain.

Fourth and last. Just this morning I needed to defrost my window and noticed that my heater blower only worked on full blast. This is a key symptom of a blown power transistor that controls the voltage for the speed of the blower. The annoying thing is that I have replaced this twice in the 3 years I've had the car. This will make the 3rd time to replace this transistor. What is going on? One thing I noticed was that last time I made a stupid mistake and installed a thin plastic sheet between the transistor and the aluminum mounting bracket. I effectively eliminated the heat sink effect that the aluminum bracket was supposed to have on the transistor. The thin plastic sheet was included and cut to size in the replacement transistor so for some reason I thought I should include it. Hint: Don't do this when you replace yours.

I actually realized this a bit later but was just curious how long it would last until it died. Well, I have my answer. It's less than a year. Realizing my stupid error, this time I not only made sure that there was not a thin plastic sheet insulating the transistor from the aluminum mount, but I also used heat sink compound to make sure the heat transfer properties were maximized. I used an NTE130 transistor, which is a direct replacement for the 2N3055 that was stock. It's just a common NPN transistor. I think I paid like $3.50 for mine. Basically it's a super cheap part and easy to get. It's criminal that if you were to buy thi replacement assembly from BMW or many parts shop, they will charge you over $100 for the part! BWN will charge you even more. With basic soldering skills and a $3 part, you can fix it yourself. After about 1 hour of work, my heater blower motor has variable speed again.

So that's the update from me. I'm still thinking about repainting my roof. Also a new malady has arisen. When I am turning the steering wheel and the car is not moving, I am hearing a groaning sound. It's not the power steering pump but something else in the front suspension. It's annoying. Oh well, more stuff to investigate.