E30 Zone

Hi there

Ive read some other posts on this topic however i just wanted to check what part i need and if there is any other advice!

Ive taken off the glovebox and i could see that there was water dripping down a black/white box from the join in between. Is this the heater matrix? If so can i just get a new one from eurocarparts?

Also what kind of problems would this cause? Would it cause the car to over heat due to lack of pressure? The car has been getting warm but i have tracked this down to a broken viscous fan.

Cheers

Dom

bumpety bump just need some advice for ordering the part, or fixing it if its some kind of seal?

hi mate this is the same problem i had in my sport when i bought it, i bought a matrix from gsf think it was £89 or something had my brother fitting it on his drive (dash out job=NIGHTMARE). cured the problem tho. eventually if left leaking all your coolant would be lost and nack your engine

dash out job! That sounds like a knightmare, just had a flashback to that programme knightmare when they wore the helmet and got guided around haha.

Yea i thought that the main problem would be just loss of coolant but i wondered if the leak could cause the engine to over heat?

Ok then its not the heater matrix, ive gone to ecp and that part is like a radiator. Its the box that goes inbetween the pipes on that. Just to the right of the glovebox, the car is steaming from there now when i turn it on!

Hi Catalyst,
These are the pipes to your heater matrix. You can dismantle them and rebuild with O Rings. I got an O Ring kit from Aldi of all places that had hundreds of different size O Rings in and rebuilt mine with that, however it took a couple of attempts to get the joint nearest to the matrix to seal properly. Once I had done this water started coming out of the heater matrix - so it might be worth your while removing this too. Only problem is on later cars with plastic pipes to the matrix it is an IP (dash) out job. Earlier cars with metal pipework, I beleive you can do it with the IP in situ.

You will have to take the pipes out which is a bit fiddly but can be done. They have captive square nuts and the bolts with small torx (can't remember which size) heads. The only real pain is that the fixings closest to the bulkhead have the torx heads facing the bulkhead so there is virtually 0 access (A VERY stupid design error by BMW there!!). I could not get to mine from inside the car, but you could with a lot of patientice get to the through the rubber grommet in the engine bay...

Hope this helps.

This is the electric heater valve, and is a very common failure. I've never had to replace a heater matrix ever!
No need to go for a new one - there's plenty of good second hand ones around if you ask on here, BUT make sure your radiator pressure cap has been replaced under the 1996 recall, or your new one may fail in the same way.

Thanks for the help! Im off to the wanted section!

If theres no joy sourcing a sh one, is it worth taking it out and rebuilding the seals like Jamese said? Or is it more likely the thing is stuffed? When i turned it on today after a while steam started spraying out of it!