Hello all, I have just bought my 1st BMW and she is a beauty, a 320i touring, full of leather and sounding lovely but she has a couple of annoying problems.
The most irritating of these being the speedo and mpg gauge regularly not working and seemingly dragging the heater fan down with them it seems to happen mainly in the wet which is almost all the time round these parts. Having looked around the forum I have seen the advice about checking the cables on the rear diff and will be doing so this afternoon, I am a bit apprehensive about removing the SI board but I will just have to bite the bullet with that if it comes to that. I checked the fuses 1st off and made sure they were all seated properly and this seemed to cure the fan failure but that hasn't worked last time.
If anyone has any ideas I would be most grateful.
Speedo and MPG gauge and heater
Moderator: martauto
-
Brianmoooore
- E30 Zone Team Member
- Posts: 49360
- Joined: Mon Jan 10, 2005 11:00 pm
First of all, welcombe to the widest and best source of E30 info. on the planet.
No connection between the instruments and the heater, other than they both earth (along with a load of other things) on a couple of nuts behind/above the glove box.
Remove the inspection panel above the glovebox and you will see a load of brown wires all going to the earthing point. Check the nuts are tight.
Heater motor bearings can usually benefit from a drop of oil after 20 years.
Speedo problems are usually the wire going into the diff under the back of the car, but there have been cases of cracked joints on the speedo unit in the instrument cluster.
If you've got the cluster apart, look for two cracked solder joints near the top of the temp gauge, opposite a rectangular lump on the back of the cluster, and tighten the brass nuts on the outside behind the fuel and temp gauges. These are nothing to do with your reported faults, but will prevent a couple of annoying faults in the future.
No connection between the instruments and the heater, other than they both earth (along with a load of other things) on a couple of nuts behind/above the glove box.
Remove the inspection panel above the glovebox and you will see a load of brown wires all going to the earthing point. Check the nuts are tight.
Heater motor bearings can usually benefit from a drop of oil after 20 years.
Speedo problems are usually the wire going into the diff under the back of the car, but there have been cases of cracked joints on the speedo unit in the instrument cluster.
If you've got the cluster apart, look for two cracked solder joints near the top of the temp gauge, opposite a rectangular lump on the back of the cluster, and tighten the brass nuts on the outside behind the fuel and temp gauges. These are nothing to do with your reported faults, but will prevent a couple of annoying faults in the future.
-
craigw8
- E30 Zone Newbie
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Wed Nov 30, 2005 11:00 pm
Thanks very much for getting back to me, I managed to sort the speedo thing, looked at the cable from the diff and there was one of those lego connectors that someone had wired in and left totally open to the elements, sealed it with tape for now but I'll have to replace it eventually. As to the heater I'll try your suggestion and when I get access to the garage, i'll pull the cluster and check the suggested bits. Thanks again.