pictured above is greg, he bought the car with 25k miles as the second owner.
greg was cruising along at a scant 35mph when the car sputtered and died.
his friendly stealer charged him shy of 2k to change the starter (?) and then the ignition switch. the car still wouldn't run. Then they told him it had a "couple bent rods" he listed on cl and i harassed him 3 times a day for a week, finally he realized I was serious and told me i could pick it up. Saturday morning i hooked up the flatbed and drove to palm springs at 5 am. returned home with my newest project at 6pm.

Sunday morning I drained all the old stinky gas. pulled the plugs (#1 fuel soaked) ran a compression test(all at 155) then I pulled the fuel rail and watched what happened (with new gas) many injectors not firing at all. #1 injector opens up and unloads all the pressure. swapped #1 for #3 (which seemed to be firing normally) still dumps all fuel at the #1 position, and fired normally now in #3. moved things around a lot.determined that injectors spraying nothing are not clogged because they spray fine in other positions. #6 also occasionally just decides to stay open and dump fuel.

My buddy edis who is 20 plus year MB tech thinks its an ecu failure (even though he admits it is rare) We removed all the vin coded parts and he will try in another vehicle to see if problem transfers with ecu.

at the same time I came across another irrestible parts car that looks loaded with go fast goodies (carbonio air box and intake, exhaust, flat bottom wheel among others). edis wanted the brakes and well the rest is history. bought it this morning and it should be here early next week. will serve as excelllent parts backup and it cost only a little more than the aftermarket parts would have cost alone.















Nice to be here, the e46 bmw crowd was getting a little youthful for me tbh.
sorry about the huge pic up top, i dont know how to resize it.

Kevin

p.s. if anyone recognizes the wrecked car I would LOVE to find the original owner. looks heavily modded. bought at san diego auction but could have come from anywhere in cali

 

I know that wrecked car.

I will post a link to this on the Facebook group and see if the owner wants to get in touch

 

thanks, it would help me out a lot. i can pm you my phone number/email if he prefers one or the other. even to just get a list of mods and have an idea what all I am dealing with.

kevin

 

Great finds, good luck with the build. I'll be tuning in.

 

Awesome finds. I love the wagon!

 

Nice find on both cars. Love the American car culture. I wish there was a bigger car culture here in the Toronto area (Canada).

Rob.

 

After some searching and deliberation we decided the ecu was cooked ( despite the rarity of this) i had purchased a running parts car at auction because it had what i guessed to be 3k in aftermarket parts (i spoke to owner and learned it was MUCH more)..anyway. since we have a known good runner, we swapped the wagon ecu, key,steering lock and ignition into the wreck. the car ran exactly like the poorly running wagon, missing, dumping fuel at 2 injectors. So we were excited that we were right. It didnt last long. we put the same components from the wreck into the wagon. It started up, purred like a kitten, was burning off all the sh** in the cats, we decided it was time for a test drive. as soon as we started moving it went to ****. started missing, started dumping fuel into the cylinders. it was heart breaking. I removed ecu that WAS good earlier that day, opened it up, and identified a clearly cooked chip.

I have another ecu set on the way and will begin testing every circuit that is connected to the ecu this week. im close and far all at once.

but it sure as sh++ doest have bent rods.

KO

 

Happy to hear about your progress! Again, big congrats...

 

gl man. im sure it will turn out good. and you scored big.

 

Keep us posted. I saw that wagon on CL and was trying to figure out how to get it to me. You beat me to it. Great Find!

 

I think that silver sedan was my friend Jeremie's here in San Diego.

 

Jeremie and I have been in touch. I quiz him regularly to make sure I know what I have. It's been extremely helpful.

Update. Swapped motors out. Made sure I wasn't using any sensors or wiring from original setup. Did the split ic at same time. Put engine in with the oem crank pulley as I didn't have a tune anymore after smoking the ecu that carried it.

Car is currently running (gingerly) on 80mm throttle body, kleemann shorty headers and oem tune. Using key/ignition/steering lock from a part out thread. Shipping out the original ecu for repair so it can all go back together with matching bins and be happy again.

Running the shorty headers with no primary cats has it sounding ridiculously sweet. But I want a tad more. Considering the x pipe in place of resonators. But that will have to wait till I get things really dialed in and get my ecu/tcu tune done.

 

Hey Kevin!

Glad to see you got it running so far. I bought the airpump and floor mats off you a little bit ago.

I need to come by and take some more parts off your hands! lol

Do you need the Star at all?

- Travis

 

My buddy edis has been showing me the ropes with star. Still running from a donor ecu so I'm not rushing to dial it in until I get my original ecu repaired.
The wreck moved to his yard for the time being so it's a little more tricky getting parts. Lmk if u want to take a trip down there.
Kevin

 

Well the car has been running great. I got with the guys at eurocharged and went with their ecu/tcu tune and the 83mm supercharger pulley. Just the tune itself woke up the car. Installed the 83mm super pulley and it went into beast mode. Car is a blast already. Hopefully I can find some time this week to swap my renntech 168 crank pulley and the tuned tcu in. Loving the sounds it makes. Still haven't let anyone ride in it except my wife. Looking at a few different sets of wheels available and I would live to hear from anyone who has run 20s on this chassis.

Also interested to hear from anyone who has swapped in the clear projector lense. I can't seem to find a good diy or comparo. I feel like the original bulbs are not putting out as much light as they should anymore.

 

Glad you got the car running! I hear running 20's can ruin some suspension components.

I'm about to do these headers tomorrow. I just picked up a scatter shield for the s/c pulley. If you need the link to where I got it, let me know. It's coming from AU

 

Painted my spare surge tanks and installed the spacers that came off the wreck. From what I understand they help keep the surge tanks a little cooler. They were free. Ymmv

 

Well after I got it running nicely I installed the Eurocharged ecu and tcu tune as well as the renntech 168 pulley. Drove it around for a bit and it was obvious that passenger rear shock was no Bueno. Hopping while hitting it from a stop. It would even do it if I hit gas hard while traveling 50 to 60. So I decided to do full coilover conversion. Finished the install today and I plan to give it some road time the next couple weeks. It already feels more like a car than a boat. Will report back once I have put some miles on the new suspension. It felt good to remove all those air bags!


Edit: also running 4 rear wheels/tires for square setup.... I'm pretty excited to see how it's manners have changed.

 

Did you figure out what was frying the ECU's chip?

 

My suspicion is that it was within the alternator. When I disassembled the original motor and harness I found absolutely nothing at all that looked suspect. I removed every sensor and went over every wire. Nothing looked odd. Used the harness and all sensors from my donor vehicle and the problem vanished. So all I know is every sensor/wire/electronic part off the original motor is in the city dump now. None of it was worth the risk.

 

I got rid of wheel hop with a new transmission mount. Might want to add that to your list.

 

I saw that wagon on cl. I was trying hard to buy it but the seller never got back to me until later on when he already sold it.

It had a blown motor and was selling for 7500 I believe.

I already had a motor lined up for this project

 

He was a real interesting guy, I was I initially annoyed by him because I was literally blowing him up like a crazy ex girlfriend and getting nothing.
When we met I realized he was just a laid back guy that was seriously overwhelmed by the response. He showed me how many emails and txt he was getting. It was nuts. I consider myself a lucky guy for landing it.

 

What about that carbon intake from the donor car? Lol did you swap it over also?

 

I did. Trying to sort out how to make the intake tubes work around the split ic system.. Its far from a daily driver so I have only put like 200 miles on it since I got it. Now that summer is here I wanna sort the ic