cooling system rebuild fun m44 318is 142k miles

[nvkulk]

last week at my aunts house that blasted plastic connector ( head) at the firewall broke...car didnt overheat...i saw steam coming out of the hood and knew what its was....


I just finished replacing all the hoses and that plastic connector as well as the long plastic connector that feeds the block.

since i was threre i also changed out my dying blower motor ( take the wipers off and the plenum. and loosen the bolts that hold the wiper motor unit and pull the blower out)

and aslo the starter...e12 torx, use a ratchet with a flex head or a small breaker bar with a flex head... the angle of attack is an acute angle...

cirrus sr22 did a nice job...i thank him for his write up

remember to label all the connectors that come form the squid and that the squid goes thru ( you;ll see what i mean ) the lower intake manifold...

also the inlet pipe into the fuel rail has an o ring that gets lost..if you reconnect this youll spill fuel ( ask me how i know)..

So get a o ring gasket set which has 15 gaskets for 4 $ ( the gaskets say for fuel..it says on the box) at the local parts store...

The o ring is 25 cents from BMW but my local dealership ( bmw arlington) wants 2.50...

i aslo changed out the CCv while i was there...and the camshaft sensor. be careful with the britle plastic L shaped plastic that holds the camshaft sensor wiring...(i was lucky ...it survived)


...the crankshaft sensor is near the large long black connector piece by the engine block. My crankshaft sensor was the wrong one (m42) so i cleaned the old one andput it back

bleed the system...sucks!

BTW while you are in there change out the alternator ( if its acting up )



I changed out the h20 pump, up/lower rad hose and t stat , and radiotor last month...do that while you are there...one less headache!

Hope this rambling helps someone...
Nik

[96-318ti]

The connector just broke on the back of my 96 318ti. What is the best way to access it to change it out?

[nvkulk]

on the knowledge base part of this forum there is thread called cooling system rebuild w/pics. i essentially followed that DIY. I uised all the part numbers on that DIY. That piece that broke is i think less than 10 bucks...I would swap out as many coolant hoses and tthat long black coolant piece( 10 bucks as well) under the fuel rail also.

I took off the airbox,upper intake manifold,lower intake manifold, fuelrail and injector off...It was not easy but not so hard as i expected....time consuming