Some Problems

[pismomonkey]

Hello,
I am a long time reader first time poster here.

anyways i have a 525i 1990 e34 BMW. and i been having some problems with it lately. i commute between home and college every 2 weeks (~75 mile trip) and this past weekend I lost some coolant when i arrived and the car was smoking just a little near the radiator.

anyways i move my car (damn parking schedules) and at a intersection the car stalls and doesnt move (its a automatic) or turn on, so i waited like two minutes and then it turned on although with some loss of power. i parked the car and checked it out but i didnt see any sign of overheating so i proceeded to find a parking space. anyways as i was looking i check out the temperature and the needle is at red. i park and i find that my car was smoking just a little (oil on the engine?) and there was a hissing sound. what could the hissing sound be? the car still has a slight loss of power when im driving slowly (first gear?) and im concerned about driving it 75 miles back and having it stall in the middle of the highway and getting hurt...

anyways have any idea?

thanks

[Hozay]

I'd say the hissing is a busted hose...and from past experience, a bunch of those symptoms relate to overheating. If my car was doing that, there's no way I would risk driving 75 miles. I would get the hoses looked at for starters...and start hoping that you haven't warped the head, which would then require machining and a new gasket to rectify the problem.

[Dave M]

Get it towed to a shop, explain to them what happened and hope you haven't warped or cracked the cylinder head.

Good luck with it, and I mean lots of luck ;)

Dave M

[pismomonkey]

that would be unfortunate.

i just dropped in a old-new engine =\


i guess its time for me to move onto another type of car.....


maybe a 3 series ^^

[trumpetr]

Sounds like your water pump is shot. The factory ones have a plastic impelller, that decides to spin off the shaft. With no water circulating, the temp gage goes hot real quick, and you'll have hard, hot hissing hoses.(sorry for the alliteration.)

Daves right- TOW it to your mech, dont risk driving it hot and f'ing up your head.

[bsell]

Sounds like your water pump is shot. The factory ones have a plastic impelller, that decides to spin off the shaft. With no water circulating, the temp gage goes hot real quick, and you'll have hard, hot hissing hoses.(sorry for the alliteration.)

Daves right- TOW it to your mech, dont risk driving it hot and f'ing up your head.

Dude, that would suck to have had the new/old engine out and not at least have looked at the water pump for the cheapie plastic impeller. But such is life and 20/20 hindsight.

I hope you didn't heat the engine so hard like some of the 944s I've seen. Like so hot the plastic vacuum lines melt to the head, hot. Can you say bananna-shaped heads? One guy warped it so much there wasn't enough material in a factory head to mill it back to flat without running afoul of the minimum deck height. Owner didn't have money for a new/used head so we milled it and slapped her on with no guarantees. He never came back with a problem. If that is a good thing or not, I don't know...

Brian

[pismomonkey]

well it has taken for a worse turn.

now the car is having trouble starting up... spark plugs bad?

anyways so i can attribute the stumbling performance to the fuel pump?

and the hissing sound to the waterpump/hoses?

thanks again. im still learning :]

[Dave M]

well it has taken for a worse turn.

now the car is having trouble starting up... spark plugs bad?

anyways so i can attribute the stumbling performance to the fuel pump?

and the hissing sound to the waterpump/hoses?

thanks again. im still learning :]

Until you determine whether you have power to the fuel pump and you're actually getting fuel pressure (fuel pressure tester-try a search), you can't assume its the pump.

If it was a real bad overheat, your compresion could be comprimised by a blown gasket (or worse). How does the coolant level in the resevoir look? What does the coolant and oil look like (are they mixing?)? Spark plugs could be covered in coolant or oil as well. Pull the plugs, check for fuel pressure/spark etc. and let us know what you find.

Dave

[pismomonkey]

Thanks. Ill take a look after finals. Appreciate it a lot.

[pismomonkey]

Just to give you guys an update.


I replaced the spark plugs, the roter and the water pump.

It works fine now :]

thanks for all the info.