I bought this car: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/cars-sale/my-e46-325xi-kart/205087/page1/
And my thought was to do a crazy drive to the challenge and compete and then sell. Unfortunately, after a nearly flawless drive home sunday afternoon from the seller, the car is now cranking but not starting. Here's the full story:
1. Pickup car from seller. Have a good time chatting with GRMer as I always do. He sends me on my way, car starts and runs just fine. Drive home, car got a lot of attention on the highway, as the seller promised it would haha. What I did notice though is that from time to time the car would cut out momentarily, the cluster would freak out, but then it would come right back. Honestly if you weren't watching the gauges you would hardly notice. Still - does not bode well for an impending 2000 mile road trip.
2. Get home, park car in my driveway. Notice big power cable has been shorting on the exhaust manifold. "There's the cutout issue, easy fix." I thought. Waited for car to cool down, wrapped cable with electrical tape where the manifold had melted the shielding away, and moved the cable away from the manifold a bit.
3. Got back in car to move into garage. Crank no start. hmmmmmmm. Text seller, he said the car did not hot restart one time under his ownership, but otherwise has had no issues.
4. Checked all the fuses I could see, all show continuity with my multimeter.
5. Thought maybe I was out of gas, gauge showed 3/8th of a tank or so but I figured it could be wrong. Pushed the car into the garage.
Since then, I've added about 2.5 gallons of gas, no beans. I believe I hear the fuel pump running however and the fuel pump relay clicking. Plan to test for fuel pressure to be sure. I've found all the fuses listed in the service manuals I can find online and everything tests fine via continuity test with voltmeter. Including the 5 fuses inside the 'e-box' under the hood and the high amp fuses hidden on the back side of the main fusebox, and the really high amp fuse near the battery. Checked codes with my obd2 reader, and have a few, can list them here in a bit.
What I have noticed is that the DME relay doesn't seem to be clicking. Did some digging and the relay is ground-side switched by the ecu, but the ground signal is not coming when I turn the key to the on position. The wire that connects the relay signal to the ecu is showing continuity. uh oh.
Thoughts on what to do next? I'm tempted to just remove the DME relay and jumper the pins (or maybe make my own ground side switch) to give it a shot, but I'm thinking there may be something else the ECU needs to see in order to provide the ground to the relay. All I currently have is crappy PDFs of service manuals I can find online, so even some access to better data would be helpful (don't mind paying a few bucks for instant access to something if there are good recommendations).