e30 wiring loom questions

Post Mon Sep 22, 2014 4:50 pm

Hi guys,

Looks like i will need to strip the wiring loom from the car to do some repairs which means it would be a good time to replace it (it has some fuse box issues).

As such i have a few questions about the body loom.

Are all e30 looms the same (Pre facelift)?

Are left and right hand drive ooms the same (presume not)

Is the M3 loom different from standard at all?

Obviously is anyon has a really good lhd body loom available I am all ears!

Post Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:44 pm

IainW wrote:
Are left and right hand drive ooms the same (presume not)

Obviously they are different, but both the dash looms run across the car behind the dash from left to right. One is a sub loom that plugs into the body loom, so your existing one should be reusable, and with the other, you should be able to make most plugs reach by doubling the RH part back on itself, possibly with a bit of re wrapping. A LH drive loom would be best, but in the event of that not being obtainable, I don't think there would be insurmountable problems with a RH drive one.

Post Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:09 pm

The LHD loom has a lot of difference to RHD, you will need to fit your own oil temp wiring (M3 specific) and although the Dash plug and accessory socket is in the same place, they are very different !

Finding an M3 body loom is almost impossible, I searched for 2 years I would try repair what you have !

Post Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:18 pm

Lots of variables with looms and as the newest ones are over twenty years old, I would be repairing your own.

Post Tue Sep 23, 2014 1:23 pm

right, well looks like i need to repair it then.

So the problem that i have is that at some point when the car was first painted the loom was not removed properly by disconnecting the interior connection and pulling it throuh the bulkhead. insead some oik poked the pins out of the fusebox and pulled it into the car.

As such the pins in the box drop out of the board and the locator tangs are snapped off in some / many cases.

Does anyone know where i can obtain replacement fittings? to fix it properly i will have to replace the fuse mounting plastics and most if not all of the fittings.

Post Wed Sep 24, 2014 1:25 pm

You can get the pins from BMW.

Is an m3 fuse box identical to a normal e30?

Post Fri Sep 26, 2014 9:53 am

Certainly the fuse box is physically identical, but the issue seems to be that there are quite a few small differences that combined make it a pain to retrofit a cooking one.

Do you know the part number of the terminal? I am presuming it is either part 14 or 15 on here, but if anyone knows for sure it would save me some time and guesswork.

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do ... g=61&fg=15