Beiträge von revtor

IvanT: The E32/E34 HVAC/IHKA control unit has quite a different internal construction despite the very similar looks. You will not find suitable donor parts in it. This eBay auction has a few pictures that clearly show the different button mechanisms.

If you are brave you could try to disassemble the buttons. These old style buttons often share the same switch mechanism for momentary and latching switches with an external spring/latch being the difference. Maybe that broke or came dislodged. Sadly I can't say for sure this is the case with the HVAC control unit buttons. It's been many years since I had my HVAC control unit open. I don't remember all details but I do recall that I could not get access to the individual switches due to the metal brace over them. I forgot how that brace is attached but I think the only way to get access to the individual switches was to desolder them from the PCB (which I did not attempt). If you'd like to give this a try you'll need a proper desoldering iron/gun. Solder wick or a solder sucker won't do the job. There's a lot of pins to desolder and these old PCBs are easily damaged (traces and pads lifting) from excessive and prolonged heat. Even if the switches do not have an external latching mechanism (or it cannot be repaired), you might be able to locate the manufacturer and part number. Maybe replacements can be found. Anyway, there are a lot of uncertainties here. There may not be an external latch, it may not be repairable, and the switches may no longer be available with no suitable replacements.

If you decide to replace the RHD control unit with a LHD version, the passenger-side roller wheel indeed becomes the master (overriding the driver-side roller wheel when set to the maximum/minimum)? If that is annoying/undesired you can simply desolder the passenger side microswitch and move it to the other side. If you look at the PCB you'll notice that the solder islands and switch outline are present next to the other roller wheel.

As far as I know they still are. I just think this topic has poor visibility towards the UK E31 community. You may have better luck at bimmerforums.co.uk although I'm not sure it's permitted to offer parts for sale over there.

It seems the service manuals are just too big to attach to the forum. I've put them on my website instead and added the download links to the first post of this topic. Enjoy!

Special thanks to Terje for purchasing the service manual and donating it to us!

Update: Added the service manual of the Becker BE4720 Traffic Pro.

huldra66: It's not that straightforward on this forum (I usually host on my own website).

Click "Reply" or "Reply to Thread", then "Go Advanced". Now you can type your reply message and somewhat below the reply text box you'll find the "Manage Attachments" button. Click it and a new browser window or tab will open where you can see your previously uploaded files. Since you want to attach a new file, click "Add Files" in the top right corner, then "Browse" and select the desired PDF file and finally click "Upload". The new file will automatically be added to your list of uploaded files and to the "Attachments" of the new reply (the bottom most area). Repeat if you want to add more than one attachment. Finally click "Done" in the lower right corner to return to your message and post it by clicking "Submit Reply".

I've not seen the Pioneer KE-92 schematics or service manual for download for free, but you can purchase it for a reasonable fee from manualscenter.com. Personally I firmly believe this kind of information should be public domain and free but I guess someone has to pay for hosting... I've purchased a few service manuals from manualscenter.com before, so I can confirm they are legit.

If you would rather like the real paper version, there's one on eBay at the moment.

The message indicates that 8er.org does not use a secure SSL connection with certificate. SSL connections encrypt your activities on a site so information, like login credentials, cannot be stolen by someone 'eavesdropping'. The certificate on its turn provides assurance that you are connected to the same domain as the certificate and not some phishing attempt (*). SSL connections can be recognized by "https" in the URL instead of "http" and many browsers indicate a valid certificate with a green padlock symbol in the address bar.

I don't think it needs explanation why you'd want that for your online banking account. On the other hand you may argue that your online banking information is sensitive data but 8er.org is not. From that perspective it's not really an issue that 8er.org does not use SSL. After all, the world wide web worked fine for almost 27 years with the majority of the websites not having SSL. True, but the world wide web is not the same place anymore. It has become the domain of criminals and mass surveillance by governments.

Over the past years there as been a strong drive to push all websites towards SSL. However, without a valid (authenticated) certificate SSL connections throw warning messages all over the place so a website needs a valid certificate. These are handed out by certificate authorities and traditionally certificates tended to be fairly expensive business. That changed drastically with the birth of Let's Encrypt in 2016 which provides certificates for free. Since then every website owner can get a proper SLL connection with certificate. Let's Encrypt has been welcomed by many hosting providers and many website management tools have been updated with support for it. Today the installation, maintenance and renewal of Let's Encrypt certificates is usually extremely easy.

There's no good reason left why not to use SSL. Even if you believe no sensitive data is being processed SSL does not really bring a downside. The result is that major players are slowly but surely pushing everyone over to use SSL. Browsers will complain more and more about insecure connections and search engines started to rank websites that do not use SSL lower.

So while you should not worry about the "website not secure" message immediately it would be nice of 8er.org to respect the privacy of its users by switching to SSL as well.

Note that for Internet forums it can be quite difficult to even impossible to provide a full SSL experience. Forums like 8er.org allow users to link to images on external hosts which do not use SSL. As a result browsers may not consider the website fully SSL encrypted and not show the green padlock icon or display a warning. That should not prevent the website owner from enabling SSL, though.

(*): With certificates nowadays available to everyone and at no cost, it should be clear that phishing sites can use valid certificates as well. Your online banking website will use an expensive extended validation certificate which means the owner is thoroughly validated (indicated in most browsers by displaying the certificate owner in green next to the padlock symbol). Most other websites cannot afford such certificates and use non-validated certificate types like the free ones of Let's Encrypt. The green padlock by itself is thus not a good indication of website ownership but it shows the connection is fully encrypted.

Since most members here are also regulars over at bimmerforums.com this may not be news, but in case you missed it, check out the movie Petrolicious Films made about Taylor Patterson's 1995 850CSi.

Link on YouTube
Link on bimmerforums.com

The E31 center console is a mixed bag of switches using LEDs and switches using small incandescent light bulbs. I don't have the EDC switch but it probably uses small bulbs (if it had LEDs I don't think it would have failed). These bulbs are soldered in place but can be replaced with a little bit of effort. The problem is that the bulb specs are unknown but a 12 V grain of wheat bulb with similar sizes will probably work fine and can be bought cheap on eBay. Alternatively you can convert the lamps to LEDs (pay attention to the polarity and don't forget the series resistor).

Open circuit does not sound right to me? Shogun's E32 ABS sensor testing procedure mentions a typical resistance of 1 kiloohm. That's of course from an older E32 but the same typical value can be seen in this E46 topic, so it's not unlikely the ABS sensor resistance of bimmers manufactured in between, like the E31, should be the same.

Anyway, static resistance measurement is probably not a good way to diagnose ABS sensors but at least it should give an indication of broken wire / short circuit.

eBay link

Caveat emptor: The brand is not Bosch but Intermotor. We all know how well aftermarket MAFs work on the M70... It also does not look like an S70 MAF. The S70 MAF does not have the fine mesh protective grille.

Glad to see you here again, Jud!

Sharkfan: You should have access to all forums except for two private club forums which require paid membership - Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz (G06: D-A-CH) and BMW Club Serie 8 France (F02: FRANCE). There are other forum groups which can be joined/left but by default you should have access to every forum except those requiring paid membership. You can control your group memberships in your forum profile.

The private club forums provide premium services like access to E31 related documents - most of which you can find elsewhere as well but perhaps not as neatly organized. There are great and interesting discussions in the private forums but in my opinion paid membership only makes sense if you speak the language fluently. There's not a single discussion in English in there...

huldra66: Welcome to the nineties!

Another great read, Roger! Thanks!

The closed nature of this forum makes it somewhat unattractive to newcomers and pretty much invisible in search engines. There's very little we can do to improve that because making the forum public is not an option (not my decision). Does that mean this place is dying? I don't think so, but 8er.org simply does not have the number of members that for example bimmerforums.com has to keep a continuous supply of discussions going. That doesn't mean no one is here - many members are lurking. If someone posts a question here, he/she will most likely get an answer. The quality of the posts and the knowledge of the members is excellent over here.

NickF: Reinhard already owns the last one

Zitat von fuzzifikation;131808

A batch makes sense if I produce well over 100 units. That's A LOT. Otherwise we are looking at hand-soldering and programming - that will be expensive!

When I was talking about a batch I was thinking about 10 or maybe 20... Forget about selling a 100. That will never happen.

Zitat

Your question was: Why not convert the tables within the ECU. Sure. that would also work - but I do not have ANY clue as to how to do that.
If folks would prefer that - sure, that's also fine with me. I'll happily provide the data.

I do not know much about changing the fuel-to-air maps either, but Omega man 1969 at bimmerforums.com does. He is quite knowledgeable about chip tuning and has investigated the S70 DME and EML in detail and even offered to reprogram the maps to work with other MAFs. Of course, this approach would only make sense if it can reduce the costs of the electronics substantially because you'd loose drop-in compatibility with tuned chips.

Personally I'd prefer to find a company that rebuilds these MAFs. It's not exactly rocket science.

Maybe...

I never had an E36 OBC open but judging from pictures I found online at least some models use the same button mechanism as the E31 MID. The problem is that there have been 2 different styles of keyboard mechanisms in the E31 MID and at least 2 in the E36 MID as well. I have pictures comparing both E31 styles but I can't find them back, sorry. Here's what the later style looks like:

An overly complex and fragile design.

Please note that depending on what fails (usually the plastic levers), you will not be able to repair individual buttons. You will have to transplant entire groups of buttons. So if you think you can be smart by getting a donor MID/OBC with different dead buttons, think again.

The E31 keyboard mechanism is secured to the board with retaining clips and can be removed easily as you can see in my picture. It is however possible - I don't know for sure - that the early keyboard mechanism does not fit the holes and cut-outs in the later PCB (and vice versa). I also saw a picture of an E36 keyboard that was secured with melted plastic tabs. I don't think you could easily transplant this particular keyboard mechanism. If you can't transplant the keyboard mechanism easily I would simply desolder the E31 keyboard PCB and solder the E36 one in place. I would be very surprised if it's not pin compatible... Both use the same 15-pin ribbon cable.

PS: The above is only true if you get the 18-button E36 OBC. The other variants do not have keyboard parts you can reuse (apart from the 1/10/100/1000 keys perhaps).

For the S70 no third party MAFs are available but for the M70 you can find cheap knockoff MAFs on eBay. User experiences at bimmerforums.com however suggest that they do not work well at all. So basically that leaves M70 and S70 owners only with the OEM MAFs. Nothing wrong with that if they weren't so ridiculously expensive - if still available! For the M70 you might get lucky finding MAFs cheap from a breaker but for the S70 I would not count on that...

So at 450 EUR per side your option is still viable, fuzzifikation. The problem is that a lot of the M70 in need of new MAFs are cheaply bought E31. I doubt their owners will want to cough up this kind of money. On the other side of the spectrum are the owners of garage queens who will only accept a solution that looks 100% OEM - some may even only want the real deal.

I would pursue the project but if you are looking to cut down the costs by manufacturing a batch, be very careful... Experiences from previous group buys learn us that many people want something but when it comes to paying up the enthusiasm is a lot less. It's probably best to go ahead on a build-to-order base.

I assume your electronic module performs an accurate mapping between the new hot-film MAF and the original M70 MAF. In other words, it's a plug-and-play replacement. I wonder however if you couldn't make it cheaper by leaving the mapping to the DME. Just have your module output a signal that is within the range of the DME and then recalculate new fuel-to-air maps using the difference between the original curve and the new one. I mean the DME is designed to convert analog signals from sensors using maps. Why not re-use that? Naturally you'll loose drop-in compatibility with tuned chips like those from Wokke.

In the end I do wonder why we have to go through all these troubles, though. Why can't we simply have the MAFs refurbished?

Argonaut: Your '97 should not cause problems with generic BMW airbag reset tools. Just make sure to get a tool that comes with the correct plug for the old round BMW diagnostic port. It's also recommended to get a tool that can both reset the airbag light and read fault codes. If the airbag light won't go out you'll find clues to the cause in the fault codes.

If you already have a BMW diagnostic system with DIS or INPA, you don't need a third party tool.

• In DIS: [19] AIRBAG (AB) → [9] Clear fault memory
• In INPA: Body → Airbag (ZAE BAE) → Error (F4) → Clear error memory (F2)

Early E31 are sometimes very difficult to reset. Diagnostic software like DIS and INPA may not be able to access the airbag module and third party tools often have no effect. However, the SIR3 and BOA tools sold by shogun over at bimmerforums.com are known to reset the airbag light where other tools have failed. The SIR3 and BOA are pure reset tools - they do not read fault codes - but if all other tools fail... It seems they are currently out of stock, though.