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I bought an E55 on BAT at the beginning of January. The car is in great condition and has a bunch of choice mods, along with a great color scheme. I love this machine, but anything with mods is always going to be fun and come with a gremlin or two.
There are a few issues that have and are starting to present theirselves. One first appeared a few weeks back on the way home from a concert. I had to pull off the highway to drop a buddy off at his car. After taking a quick bathroom break, I got back in the car and went to start it back up and it wouldn't start.
Pretty much the lights would light up on the dash and there would be a clicking sound, the car wouldn't crank. I tried both methods of starting the car and got the same result. The previous owner had already replaced the crank shaft ignition sensor. So, my car was dead at a gas station next to a pump. A few of my buddies were with me, so we pushed the heavy sob to a parking spot. Gameplan was to come mess with the car the next day because it was late. For ****s and giggles I was like, "let me try this one more time," the car fired right up.
Any ideas on what could be going bad? Maybe a sensor in the gear selector is going bad. When we pushed the car and switched between park to neutral it may have temporarily corrected the issue. I haven't driven the car since getting home that night and there weren't any faults. I just hopped down into the garage and it fired right up.
Onto the next issue... This isn't really anything malfunctioning, it's just conformation of what I already know. The vehicle has the Weistec Supercharger kit, long tube headers, split cooling with tank in the trunk, and a methanol kit. What kind of IATs should I be seeing when I'm just cruising on the highway? My car runs pretty hot, which is normal with the Weistec kit. I'm seeing 40 to 50 degrees above ambient temperature. When it's 50 degrees outside, my car is pretty much guaranteed to be pulling timing. I'm thinking I need to just pony up and buy the VRP dual heat exhanger kit. What kind of temps are you all seeing with similar setups? How much will that VRP kit lower my IATs?
The car also has the stupid hiccup issue that started 1000 miles after I bought it. Replacing the MAP sensor definitely helped with the regularity of it, but it's still a pita. Previous owners say they never had the P106 code pop up. I've read on this for long durations of time and it seems nobody has come up with a permanent solution that doesn't involve switching back to the 74mm tb.
With that being said, these vehicles are awesome machines that offer incredible value. Any help is much appreciated.
Last edited by gnarbowski; 03-26-2020 at 02:04 AM.
On the starting issue, check the relay and fuses for the fuel pumps, passenger side in trunk behind the trim. If they look burnt, replace and repair wiring as needed.
I have a stock blower on a 77mm pulley, but I can say on these cars the more cooling the better. Others can chime in but with those mods a trunk tank and/or meth would likely be suggested.
Lastly, on the hiccup, first thing I'd try is reset the load learning with STAR if you have access to one. Sometimes as mods are added the ECU just never relearns right, happened to mine and a reset completely changed it.
Lastly, on the hiccup, first thing I'd try is reset the load learning with STAR if you have access to one. Sometimes as mods are added the ECU just never relearns right, happened to mine and a reset completely changed it.
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Do you have any more details regarding this? I'm sure folks with STAR and the hiccup would love to give this a shot. To the OP, what tune do you have on your car?
Do you have any more details regarding this? I'm sure folks with STAR and the hiccup would love to give this a shot. To the OP, what tune do you have on your car?
Go to ECU -> Adaptations -> Learning -> then click and reset Load Range Learning, click through and say yes yada yada.
I was chasing a gremlin hiccup, ended up finding while datalogging that when it happened, the TPS value would jump to 100% even with my foot 25% on the pedal, caused the fuel to spike, timing things going awry etc. I thought maybe it was a bad throttle body actuator, but it's stock and that would be a rare failure. After trying this reset it completely changed the car. Fingers crossed at this point, if it comes back after a while of re-learning I may try a new TB, but for now that seemed to fix the hiccup issue for me.
Our TPS and accelerator pedal signals have odd characteristics on these cars if you've ever watched voltage on a scan tool, it's not a simple 50% is 50%, 75% is 75% etc. I have a feeling that some people complaining about aftermarket throttle body issues may just need to go through this process first before giving up, although I know that commonly is associated with fault codes of which I've never seen any on my '03, and of course it's stock.
Recommend you look through this section. I will look if I can find it, but a forum member is the one who sold this car. He had a post up when he bought it.
My car was tuned by Jerry at Eurocharged. Once I get some cooling mods, I was going to put the car on a dyno and have him re-tune.
Make sure your cooling pump is working. If you have a trunk tank and split cooling you temp delta shouldn't be that high and your recover should be pretty quick.
If you don't already have it I'd recommend the Pierburg CWA100 or as Victory Road Performance calls it the "Superfow" and hardwired.
From my understanding, someone went to a well known poster on this board with an open check book for the build. I believe the car has had two different owners, now three, since the build. I was reaching out to the guy that built the vehicle, but I'm tired of bothering him with questions.
Last edited by gnarbowski; 03-26-2020 at 03:26 PM.
03-25-2020, 10:09 PM
