BMW E36 Blog

This is a a great car! I hope you don’t feel jealous.

Take a look :-

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.

I’m having 3 problems with the electric fan in my car.

First, I know that the electric fan should have 2 speeds: Low and High. My electric fan does work on the high speed only, I guess that I’m having a problem here. I also noticed yesterday that the temperature gauge moved a little bit towards the one clock instead of the normal 12 clock position when I left the engine running (with the A/C on) and went to grab something. The second problem that I have with the fan is that whenever the fan kicks in, the RPM bounces for like 20 seconds or a little bit more, then it returns to normal.

The third problem happens usually after I reach home and turn my engine off, the electric fan kicks in and keeps working for like 30 or maybe 40 seconds before it stops.

I noticed these problems before (except for the temp. gauge one) but I didn’t pay much attention to it until yesterday when I popped up the hood and decided to trace how the electric fan is supposed to work. The task is simple; there’s a coolant sensor that is placed in the returning hose to the car’s radiator. This sensor is supposed to keep watching the temperature of the coolant and to send a signal whenever the coolant temperature exceeds a certain value (176F, 80 C according to Bentley Manual).

To my surprise, I found that the electric fan power source is not connected to any special part that is connected to the ECM as I previously thought!! Instead, it’s connected to a relay that can connect/disconnect the fan with the battery directly LOL! I have to say that the electrician who used to work on my babe is a stupid one 😀 . The relay of course is controlled by the coolant sensor and whenever the coolant reaches a specific temperature, it will simply give the relay a signal and thus closes the electric fan circuit with the battery which drops the power from the battery because as we all know, the fan consumes a lot of power and thus the RPM starts bouncing because the ECM is trying to compensate for the loss.

So, I’m trying now to figure out how to re-connect my electric fan correctly to the auxiliary fan relay (which I found in the BMW E36 fuse box layout).

Anyone of you guys can help with this? I need to know what are the colors of the wires that are connected to the electric fan and to the coolant temperature sensor. Some pictures may be good too 😉

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate BMW E36 M3 information source.

Check this out! Anyone knows what is this?

Take a look :-

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.

Chris asked me some time ago to write about the Cold Air Intake upgrade and to try to clarify it. I have to admit there is so much talking about it and I couldn’t find any study out there that is supported by numbers. Only opinions of BMW E36 drivers who actually either created their own Cold Air Intake (CAI) or bought a kit to do that.

The idea behind Cold Air Intake (Theory):

The air intake system in your car is where the engine gets oxygen in order to create combustion. When the combustion occurs, your engine will use the resulting energy to generate power. So, if we could feed the engine more oxygen molecules, we should get a better combustion and thus more power. We also know that colder air is denser than warmer air and will thus have more oxygen molecules. So, upgrading the air intake system in your car to get cooler air will, in theory, provide a better combustion and thus more power.

Why People install CAI?

While doing a research about Cold Air Intakes (CAI) and why people normally install them, I’ve found that there are 3 reasons for that:

1. Sound:- The cold air intake will change your engine sound. You can hear the engine whistle in on the intake and you can hear a little deeper exhaust sound too.

2. Performance obviously.

3. Cool looks:- The cold air intake will give your engine a cool look as a performance car instead of a normal BMW.

Does it really work?

Well, this is the hard question for every one who tries to install the cold air intake. In theory, it should work, but in real life there are many factors that may interfere and make the cold air intake update just useless:

1. BMW Engineers are not dump:- If you follow this rule, you will definitely know that your upgrade for the car intake is useless because BMW engineers know what they’re doing and I’m 100% sure that they’re not going to let 5 or 10 more HPs to be lost from your engine just because they don’t want to install a K&N filter. BMW already engineered the air box to keep most of the heat out.

2. The fuel/air management system doesn’t adjust if there is a small change in the temp of the intake air.

3. Cold air is always closer to the ground in the summer so it’s a good idea to make the intake get the air down from the bottom of the front bumper instead of the engine bay.

4. If you decided that you don’t want to get the air like described in point 3 above, you should remember that you will need to create a heat shield to prevent the hot air in the engine bay from reaching to your K&N filter (regardless of where you put it).

As you can see, there are many factors that will cause the CAI upgrade to be useless and thus not to give you the horse power increase that you were wishing for.

Cold Air Intake Brands:

I heard about many cold air intake brands that will look and act great. Some of these are:

1. Cosmos Cold Air Intake: Make sure to get the water shield and the amsoil filter.

2. Umnitza Carbon Fiber Intake.

3. Conforti Cold Air Intake Kit.

If you decided not to buy one of these cold air intake (CAI) kits, then at least go with a K&N Filter. It’s the best choice available. Read here about it (thanks Chris for the reference)

What do I think?

Well, I’m not convinced that you’re going to get any noticeable gain in performance from installing a cold air intake (CAI) kit. There is nothing wrong with the stock paper air filter. It is good enough for other great BMW cars and it’s definitely good enough for your E36. So, I think that the people who actually install it do that for the wrong reasons. I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with getting a nice sound out of your car. It’s your choice after all, but I would recommend getting a cheap air intake and create a heat shield if you’re going to do it anyway. You can invest your 200-400 dollars somewhere else.

If you have a cold air intake…

If you have a cold air intake, lets here your opinion. Did you notice any performance gain after installing it?

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate BMW E36 M3 information source.

Hi Guys, I’ve been receiving a very good amount of user registrations on this blog everyday and I used to ignore this piece of information until yesterday when a question struck me. The question is this:

"Maybe the users who register on this blog think that they’re subscribing to it? i.e, they want to receive my posts via email?"

Let me clear this issue:

When you register to my blog (in the right sidebar under "Meta" section), you simply get a username and a password that you can use to login to your account on the blog, but you will NOT be able to receive the latest posts in your email. In order to receive my new posts, you have to Subscribe which is a totally different thing. I offer 2 ways to subscribe to the blog:

1. Using RSS: The big orange RSS icon on the right sidebar at the top)

2. Using Email: At the top of the right sidebar or using the form under every post that I have on this blog.

I know that it’s most likely that you’re already a subscribed member to this blog if you’re reading this post, but my question for you is this:

"Did you register on this blog? If yes, did you think (by mistake) that when you register on this blog that you’re subscribing to my blog posts?"

I’m saying this because if the answer for my second question is yes, this means that I have to act to make sure this point is clear for every new visitor to this blog.

I would appreciate your feedback on this question, so please let me hear your comments about it.

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate BMW E36 M3 information source.