BMW E36 Blog

Hi Guys,

Mark has made a photo shoot session for his BMW E36 convertible 325i. He was so kind to send me the photos and I really like this car very much, especially with such a great background. Take a look, I hope you like it as much as I do.

Greg has posted a comment on this blog about a safety measure that everyone of us has to do. It’s about doing a checkup on your fuel lines that are coming from the fuel tank and fuel pump. This is a very important issue that I think everyone of us has to do. The problem is that this was a comment on a post and not everyone of you is going to see, so I decided to republish it again as a new post because it’s very important and needs your immediate attention. So, here you go. The post is written in Greg’s own words.

Here is a very important job every e36 owner has to do. In particular the e36 1995 318i 318is M3 323 etc owners. BMW had major problems with hose clamps on fuel lines coming from fuel tanks/fuel pumps. Ever parked your car and got out and in doing so had the smell of fuel in the air? mmmmmmmmm here’s what to do:-

1. Put both front seats all the way forward and tilt forward.
2. Now remove the back seat base by simply pulling upwards on front lower edge, remove from car.
3. You will see that there are 2 access divisions cut into the sound proofing, lift and tuck out of the way.
4. With a Phillips head screwdriver remove both oval shape covers, this gives access to the fuel level sender units and fuel pump.

If you have any fuel sitting in these 2 places I strongly suggest you carefully replace clamps with screw type ones. Be careful not to damage plastic connection pieces and if fuel has been leaking for a long time you may find the fuel line exterior may be brittle and clamp will not seal to plastic tails. My e36 coupe had all of the above and a hair line crack in the fuel level sender unit on the passenger side. Drivers side is a fuel level sender unit and a fuel pump in one. Hope you don’t have to replace the cross over fuel line ( the 12mm fuel line) as you may have to remove fuel tank to do so. It has a metal centre section you can see that is attached to body of the car. Hope this info helps out.

Please check it out it only takes 15 minutes to check it and may save your car from burning to the ground.

Kind regards to you all,
Greg ( from Adelaide Australia )

Thank you Greg for sharing this information with us.

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

I wrote seven articles until now about how you can make your BMW lights turn on automatically at night. I will summarize these posts for you in case you have missed them. In the first post, I proved that this should be something easy to implement inside a BMW E36 car. In the second post, I presented a circuit diagram that will help you create the electronic circuit that is supposed to control your lights and turn them on automatically when it gets dark. Of course, if you don’t know how to implement such a circuit or you simply feeling too lazy to do it, you can ask some electrician to do it for you. I’m sure he will agree if you paid him $20. In the third post, I wrote about my first attempt to implement this circuit and told you that it’s partially working but it needed some enhancements. In the fourth post, I created a video with the circuit implemented on breadboard and connected directly to my brother’s car lights. In the fifth post, I soldered the circuit on permanent board and showed you exactly how I intend to use it inside my car. In the sixth post, I posted 4 videos that I shoot while testing the auto light system. In case you didn’t see these videos I suggest you check them first before proceeding. In the seventh post, I talked about a problem in controlling the headlights of the car (low beam lights). Until that time, I was able to get my dashboard lights and the angel eyes lights to turn on automatically at night, but not the low beam lights.

When I connect the circuit to control the low beam lights, I hear a buzzing sound that comes from the relay which is supposed to work as an electronic light switch. Normally the buzzing sound indicates that the relay is connecting/disconnecting really fast and that what causes the buzzing sound. So, I tried to analyze the problem to find out what is really happening.

It’s all explained in the electronic diagram below:-

I think that when the Autolight circuit sends a signal to the relay, the relay simply closes the switch which turns the headlights on. The problem occurs when the switch is closed which makes both the relay and the headlights to become connected in parallel and since the headlights resistance is much lower than the relay resistance, the relay simply disconnects which makes the headlights turn off. When the headlights turn off, the electric current passes again through the relay which makes it connect again and thus turn the headlights on again. Of course, this happens very fast which results in a buzzing sound from the relay because it’s connecting/disconnecting very fast. I think I will need to make some change to the circuit to isolate its power source somehow from the headlight power. But how can I do this? this is the big question 😀 . If you have any ideas, please feel free to share them.

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

Hi Guys,

I presented some Great BMW E36 Internal Lights photos in a post couple days ago. One of the things that I didn’t even know they existed in BMW E36 cars is the Harmon Kardon audio system. The cars with this optional audio system has a switch that is labeled "HIFI". In that post, I asked you about this switch and if anyone has it, so I got a reply from Seth and he was so kind to provide extra information about this option. You can read the description in his words below:

First off, it has 10 speakers (supposedly) although I have only seen 8 discussed in the forum I belong to. Maybe I was wrong about the subwoofer, because no one had mentioned it. It sure sounds like there’s one, though! (Tony: Valery, can you help?) The only major difference I remember from my first M3 without the upgrade, is the speakers in the front kick panels (granted it’s been 2 and a half years since that car, but I don’t remember any speakers down there), the HIFI switch that turns on an amplifier located in the left side of the trunk, next to the shock tower, and the different speakers with Harmon Kardon (HK) on the speaker shield.

The biggest problem with them is that the mid-range speakers in the front doors are prone to self-destruction at relatively low volume levels. The largest contributing factor is the automatic volume adjustment as the car gains speed (Tony: Wow! that’s a cool feature, isn’t it?). I blew my own that way! Adjust the volume level in the driveway, make it onto the freeway, and KA-POP!

BTW, if you have that annoying feature, I just learned how to fix it while I was researching the Harmon Kardon (HK) stereo. First, you start with the stereo off. Turn it on, and hold the "m" button for approx. 10 sec. The serial # of the radio should appear on the screen. Once it does, use the + and – buttons until you see GAL 1-6 . Then use the < and > buttons to adjust it up or down. 1 is the lowest change, and 6 vice versa. I believe that should also work on British BMW’s as well, even though it was explained for an American M3.

These are some photos of the Harmon Kardon audio system:

What the hell is this?!! It’s funny I have to give them that, but how he’s doing it with a BMW E36? Damn!

Take a look :-

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.