Evening
Bought me a 1992 325i 5 speed about two weeks ago that apparently has in excess of 200k mi. The colour is black on black and on 15" wheels. Bought it for a grand from Winston Salem, NC which is about a two hour drive from where I live. Great looking car from inside and outside but it does need some attention all around. The brakes are now top priority as there's a metal to metal sound upon braking application at low speeds. The whole rear suspension has to be replaced as the springs lost it's uniformity/spring rate and are now saggy. Although the shocks don't appear to be leaking or blown, but still plan to replace it anyways. I plan to do the same thing for the front and do a complete suspension overhaul, front and back. Thirdly, I'll have to cut out and weld in a base plate for where the battery sits in the trunk because half of it is gone from rust. The PO just laid in a wooden piece to put the battery in place of the original base. Not safe to drive like that around the city and on the highway. The car had sat for a year without driving, and so there were some engine running issues such as misfire upon starting, idling and running. Turned out that it was just the old rusty gas that was causing it. Put in a fresh tank of premium and is running a lot better. Have got plans to replace all gaskets and seals, wash and clean all gunk and debris as much as possible and fix all oil leaks, reinstate the stock air filter box in place of an aftermarket cold air intake which I'm against of. Need to figure out a few lines as to where it goes to. Needs tune up for sure. Signs of oil presence on spark plugs. Ohm'ed and cleaned out the ignition coil boots as I found a lot of grease in it, probably die electric grease. Primary resistance were 0.6 to 0.8 ohms across all six of them. Not sure who's idea was it to have a cool looking white face gauges for the instrument cluster with blue lighting in the background. It was a stupid idea as I literally couldn't read or see the numbers and markings properly at night time driving. Thankfully, I had ordered a replacement cluster from Ebay and swapped in different pieces from each other and put the stock looking cluster back in place. Boy, does it look good and below are the pictures of the modification. Furthermore, I plan to get rid of the aftermarket shift knob and go for a stock-ish knob or better. From the pictures, it looks like a d***o. Anyways, there are more mods to come but I shall be taking my sweet time, so don't expect regular updates from me as I'm found more active over at E39 section. Oh, by the way, I call myself Lord Auaq or Lord of 6 (I hope you understand why) over that section. I own a 2003 530i auto and have put a lot of work into it and to keep it on the road.
Enough of talks, enjoy the pics!
And the following is the instrument cluster mod.
The top one is the one that I'm getting rid of while the bottom one will going in. However, I had to swap the casing and other stuff between the two and mod it a little bit.
This is what the back of the old one looks like. There are three wires as you can see and it seems they are responsible for giving that blue light in the background. I matched all the little bulbs to ensure that they all match up with the new one, and they do.
Removed the circuit board by unplugging those two clips on the sides. There are suppose to be some screws that also holds the entire board together but a few of them were missing. This is what it looks like from the inside. This is the front view as if you are facing it when in the car because of the little black screen or window on the bottom left where it displays your oil service indicator and your mileage.
At this point I decided out of curiosity to completely disassemble the entire thing.
This is just to show how the gauges are held in place. All you have to do is to simply turn the white piece 180* either direction. There are three of them. Once turned, the whole panel/gauge comes off the outer casing.
Now here's where I face a problem. The new cluster is sweet and is all stock, however, the outside of the lens was dirty and I attempted to clean it with first soapy water that didn't work, then thought of rubbing a sand paper across it lightly which unfortunately made it worse. This is when I decided to re-use the older casing with the new internals including the labels/symbol strip, but I had to trim/cut down the two tabs behind it because the new circuit board would not fit in.
Here's what I am talking about. The picture may not do enough justice but it was dirty and got worse for sure later on.
Pulled out both label/symbol strip and you can see minor differences here and there. For example, notice the different colour for the check engine light between the two, notice the two different symbol for the SRS airbag, and on one it says ABS while the other has a different symbol. The little details! The new one is the right below and the old one is further below.
Trial fitting with the old outer casing with the new gauge and new strip.
Here's where I ran into the problem. The old one is on the left while the new is on the right. Notice a hole for a screw on the new one while there's a tab on the left one.
I had to trim or cut out half of the tab to fit the new board.
Sanding off a smooth edge.
And all now fit together without any difficulty.
All ready to go back in the car.
Shall get a night shot with lights on.
Here's where those three wires goes into.
A poor job for power source. It was just wrapped around the grey/red wire and taped off.
I threw it away though, so no worries.
Hopefully, I'll have more stuff to do and update here.
Thanks
Bought me a 1992 325i 5 speed about two weeks ago that apparently has in excess of 200k mi. The colour is black on black and on 15" wheels. Bought it for a grand from Winston Salem, NC which is about a two hour drive from where I live. Great looking car from inside and outside but it does need some attention all around. The brakes are now top priority as there's a metal to metal sound upon braking application at low speeds. The whole rear suspension has to be replaced as the springs lost it's uniformity/spring rate and are now saggy. Although the shocks don't appear to be leaking or blown, but still plan to replace it anyways. I plan to do the same thing for the front and do a complete suspension overhaul, front and back. Thirdly, I'll have to cut out and weld in a base plate for where the battery sits in the trunk because half of it is gone from rust. The PO just laid in a wooden piece to put the battery in place of the original base. Not safe to drive like that around the city and on the highway. The car had sat for a year without driving, and so there were some engine running issues such as misfire upon starting, idling and running. Turned out that it was just the old rusty gas that was causing it. Put in a fresh tank of premium and is running a lot better. Have got plans to replace all gaskets and seals, wash and clean all gunk and debris as much as possible and fix all oil leaks, reinstate the stock air filter box in place of an aftermarket cold air intake which I'm against of. Need to figure out a few lines as to where it goes to. Needs tune up for sure. Signs of oil presence on spark plugs. Ohm'ed and cleaned out the ignition coil boots as I found a lot of grease in it, probably die electric grease. Primary resistance were 0.6 to 0.8 ohms across all six of them. Not sure who's idea was it to have a cool looking white face gauges for the instrument cluster with blue lighting in the background. It was a stupid idea as I literally couldn't read or see the numbers and markings properly at night time driving. Thankfully, I had ordered a replacement cluster from Ebay and swapped in different pieces from each other and put the stock looking cluster back in place. Boy, does it look good and below are the pictures of the modification. Furthermore, I plan to get rid of the aftermarket shift knob and go for a stock-ish knob or better. From the pictures, it looks like a d***o. Anyways, there are more mods to come but I shall be taking my sweet time, so don't expect regular updates from me as I'm found more active over at E39 section. Oh, by the way, I call myself Lord Auaq or Lord of 6 (I hope you understand why) over that section. I own a 2003 530i auto and have put a lot of work into it and to keep it on the road.
Enough of talks, enjoy the pics!
And the following is the instrument cluster mod.
The top one is the one that I'm getting rid of while the bottom one will going in. However, I had to swap the casing and other stuff between the two and mod it a little bit.
This is what the back of the old one looks like. There are three wires as you can see and it seems they are responsible for giving that blue light in the background. I matched all the little bulbs to ensure that they all match up with the new one, and they do.
Removed the circuit board by unplugging those two clips on the sides. There are suppose to be some screws that also holds the entire board together but a few of them were missing. This is what it looks like from the inside. This is the front view as if you are facing it when in the car because of the little black screen or window on the bottom left where it displays your oil service indicator and your mileage.
At this point I decided out of curiosity to completely disassemble the entire thing.
This is just to show how the gauges are held in place. All you have to do is to simply turn the white piece 180* either direction. There are three of them. Once turned, the whole panel/gauge comes off the outer casing.
Now here's where I face a problem. The new cluster is sweet and is all stock, however, the outside of the lens was dirty and I attempted to clean it with first soapy water that didn't work, then thought of rubbing a sand paper across it lightly which unfortunately made it worse. This is when I decided to re-use the older casing with the new internals including the labels/symbol strip, but I had to trim/cut down the two tabs behind it because the new circuit board would not fit in.
Here's what I am talking about. The picture may not do enough justice but it was dirty and got worse for sure later on.
Pulled out both label/symbol strip and you can see minor differences here and there. For example, notice the different colour for the check engine light between the two, notice the two different symbol for the SRS airbag, and on one it says ABS while the other has a different symbol. The little details! The new one is the right below and the old one is further below.
Trial fitting with the old outer casing with the new gauge and new strip.
Here's where I ran into the problem. The old one is on the left while the new is on the right. Notice a hole for a screw on the new one while there's a tab on the left one.
I had to trim or cut out half of the tab to fit the new board.
Sanding off a smooth edge.
And all now fit together without any difficulty.
All ready to go back in the car.
Shall get a night shot with lights on.
Here's where those three wires goes into.
A poor job for power source. It was just wrapped around the grey/red wire and taped off.
I threw it away though, so no worries.
Hopefully, I'll have more stuff to do and update here.
Thanks
New to E36, old to BMW
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