DirtE30 - 1990 BMW 325i

[Senor_Taylor]

So, the car has been running fine since then except for Friday. On the way to work the CEL came back on intermittently and then when I left work the car was a no start. After about 45 minutes of pulling/cleaning relays, checking sensors, etc, I found that the front temp sensor (What the CEL was for) had a part of the wire that was bare, so I taped that up and cleaned the connections. This may be related to the no start or not, I'm not sure yet. In desperation, I laid on the starter for about 10 seconds and noticed it did start to sputter a little after a bit. The cranking to that point was like cranking a motor out of time. Nice strong crank and literally no sign of an effort to fire. I decided to go for broke and lay on the starter for as long as it took. *CLACK* *CLACK* *CLACK* *CLACK* *CLACK* *CLACK* and the engine revs to life with my foot pegged to the floor. The engine shoots up to 4 grand and scares a girl walking to her car.

The car ran well on the way home then started to sputter and stall 3 stop lights from my house. I limped it home and parked it.

The next day I went outside and the car started right up without missing a beat. I had a suspicion that the fuel gauge was not accurate below a half tank since the last time I had this no start issue, I was below 1/4 tank, so I took it to get gas. The car ran without a problem and pulled fine on the way there. However, I did notice that the fuel line leak I had "fixed" was worse than ever. Like liquid fuel pouring down the outside of the line. I babied it home with my fire extinguisher in the passenger seat and took a wrench to the injector clamp I had installed. I cranked it down tight enough to start rounding the bolt on it and the fuel leak stopped for good. Since then, the car has been a peach.

My theory is that all of the fuel in the rail and line was running out of the car while it was parked, causing me to 1) Not be able to start it 2) Get terrible gas mileage 3) Lose gas quickly and thus run low and suck up junk from the bottom of the tank. How the coolant temp sensor plays into this, I have no idea.