My goal is to develop this car into a fast, comfortable, fun-to-drive resto-mod on a Challenge budget, using junkyard parts from later BMWs whenever possible. Inspired by Tuna55 and Dusterbd13, I am going to document the build and the budget in this thread, starting right now:
Purchase Price: $1,550.00
Two years ago, it was a quick little car. Last Thursday, two "non car guy" owners later, it wouldn't run for more than a few seconds at a time. It was acting like fuel starvation, because it would restart immediately after losing revs and stalling, which it would do independent of gas pedal position.
These cars have a low-pressure in-tank "lift pump", and a high-pressure external pump and filter. I knew the high-pressure pump was working because the car ran pretty good for the few seconds it would run before falling on its face, so I figured I'd start by checking the condition of the in-tank components. As luck would have it, the in-tank pump did not respond to having 12v put to it, so I attempted to pull the pump module through the access panel in the trunk. No joy. So I dropped the tank (this is a good time to replace all the OE rubber fuel hoses, and boy are there a lot of 'em) and attempted to pull the pump module. Again, no joy. Turns out the float assembly has to be removed first, due to the curvature of the hard lines inside the tank. So, remove four nuts and washers, lift the float assembly out, then remove six screws and lift the pump assembly out of the tank. Removing the float assembly would've allowed removal of the pump assembly without dropping the tank but, like I said, I'm going to replace all the rubber fuel lines while I'm in there.
Once I had the pump assembly out, I found that the pump ran just fine when wired directly, so there was a discontinuity between the connector and the pump. Sure enough, the spot-welded ground tab had surrendered to 35 years of corrosion and vibration, and was no longer attached. Since I don't have spot-welding capability, I straightened and cleaned corrosion from the tab, then used a female spade terminal, a short length of 14 ga wire, and a ring terminal, to make a ground wire that will be connected to the pump assembly by one of the six screws that hold it to the tank. If you look closely, you can see non-grounding ground tab on the right side of the connector in the pic below (before being straightened and cleaned):
I forgot to take a pic of the ground wire, but it's really not too exciting to look at.
Cost of electrical repair: $0.00
Cost of new rubber fuel hoses: $ i don't know yet. that'll be in the next installment.