E30 Zone

I have an '88 316 carb with the older M10 engine, and last week it developed an idling fault, basically it runs beautifully until you let it idle, at which point it dies.

So after taking peoples advice, i checked all vacumn and air pipes, stripped the carb down and checked all gaskets, cleaned out the jets and checked the cable and linkage.

Still it wond idle, but occasionally when it does it sits at around 3000rpm!

Upon tracing one of the vacumn pipes throught the bulkhead i found what looks to me like an ecu mounted under the headlight switch area.

Does anybody know what this controls?

Its the most basic e30 ive ever owned, no electric windows, power steering, fog lights etc, what use could it have other than controlling the lousy and over complicated carb? Its a Pierburg 2BE if this helps?

I cant afford a webber conversion, so i need to fix this and soon.
Any help is really appreciated!

The box you've found is the electronic control unit (automatically adjusts the settings during warm up and at normal temp.)

Sorry, I know sod all else about the problem, Haynes suggests all sorts from a clogged filter (air or fuel) to a leaky head gasket.

Good luck though

i had a problem years ago with my m10 all of a sudden it wouldnt idle it would just cut out all it needed was the mixture adjusting and then it was fine

Still it wond idle, but occasionally when it does it sits at around 3000rpm! --> i have the same problem since yesterday after i cleaned it a bit. How did u fix it , i try to understand how it works , but damn , that isn't easy , i have some german and spanish data sheets , from wich i almost understnad nothing

Apparently a 2ltr ford carb fits and works well

change the carb to a weber or what dan suggests

my 316 was a dog in the winter and it was the carb there terrible

DanThe wrote:Apparently a 2ltr ford carb fits and works well

Sound interesting. From which ford??

There's a kit availible (on Ebay) with a brand new Weber, or you can put up a post here for a S/hand one. I got one here with kit and K+N filter for around £30 two years ago and I haven't looked back. The only difficulty is in fittig a manual choke, which I keep forgetting, but the car starts just as well without the choke, it just doesn't accelerate.
I makes a nicer noise, saves petrol and increases power !