Just changed my thermostat

[doogie]

After looking at various things about the cooling system, it seems my needle should always read 12 o'clock.... since I bought the car it has been about 1/4 of the way up (except for when it was overheating due to air in the system!), so I changed the thermostat at lunch time (drilled a hole in the new one at the 12 o'clock position which had an indent mark for where to drill anyway)

Hopefully that'll solve that problem, and possibly help with my other problems!

So, so far since I bought the bimmer I've gone from knowing *nothing* about working on cars (ok, I did fit a high level brake light to my old mini with a vampire connector thing, lol!) to having changed my stat, coolant, temp sensors (blue and brown) and the water pump (including snapping the bolts in that and having to grind down to the block and drill out!)

Well, at least I'm learning something!

[doogie]

(and also fitted a CD changer and new head unit and hard-wired the cabling in for my pocket pc based sat nav, and having someone fit a new battery in the instrument cluster that I'm going to have to do the capacitors on.... :S )

And to think I had barely been under a bonnet before!

[bimmerd00d]

i'd love to see a pic of the PDA sat-nav setup. Also, what is the story behind drilling a hole at 12:00 in a t'stat?

[Hector]

bmwe34.net and also Winfred has advocated this as well by drilling a 1/8" or 1/16" (can't remember which) hole at the 12 o'clock position to speed up bleeding. I installed a t'stat recently and didn't drill a hole but bleeding surprisingly went pretty fast.


i'd love to see a pic of the PDA sat-nav setup. Also, what is the story behind drilling a hole at 12:00 in a t'stat?

[Jimmy535i]

Drilling a hole in the T-Stat. I don't understand why?

I have done dozens of watepumps, radiators, t-stats, and coolant changes and
have never drilled a t-stat. Drain the coolant from the radiator and block.
Replace parts. Replace coolant. Blead system. Temp guage always at dead center
for me. I quess I am just lucky.

[liquidtiger720]

w0ah, im doing tstat pretty soon. i never heard of drilling no hole.

[doogie]

On coolant replacement pages at http://www.bmwe34.net/e34main/maintenance/engine/Coolant%20replacement.htm see down the bottom.... apparently makes bleeding M20 much easier

[George Davis]

I replaced my t-stat without drilling a hole and had a real pig of a time bleeding the cooling system. Shortly afterwards I replaced the t-stat housing, and while it was out I drilled the t-stat flange. Bleeding the system is much easier now.

The idea of the hole, which is drilled through the t-stat flange at the highest point, is to allow air to pass through the hole to make bleeding easier. Otherwise, air can be trapped behind the t-stat until it opens, which takes about a week in the case of my car when it's just idling in the driveway. The 1/8 inch hole doesn't seem to affect t-stat performance.

[doogie]

The PDA thing is rather unglamorous..... basically I took apart what I had (gps dongle with a cigarette lighter plug and connection to PDA), put spade connectors onto the cables instead of the cigarette lighter connections, patched it into the stereo power supply (since it's only hot when running) (I put a 2A fuse inline) made a little case out of duck-tape for it, stashed it above the glove box top and zip tied the gps dongle up inside the dash (actually just beside where the passengers speaker should be if a PO hadn't removed it... I have the grilles but no speakers in there!)

I then routed the PDA cable down, peeled off the cover on the gear stick (manual shift) - I was going to cut a hole in it (it has a hole already from a PO) but i just popped it out of the holder..... so basically all you can see is the PDA cable poking out of the top of the gear stick cover.

I have a wee holder thing for the PDA that I keep meaning to hot glue to that panel (I've tried a million mounting places and that one ended up being best!) so that'll stop it sliding around. I just keep the PDA with me/ in the glove box, then pull it out and plug it in whenever I need it - the GPS is active whenever the car is running so I get a fix practically straight away (especially compared to when I needed to plug into the lighter socket) and it's soooo much easier than messing around with cables, sliding out the ash tray etc etc.

[632 Regal]

The PDA thing is rather unglamorous..... basically I took apart what I had (gps dongle with a cigarette lighter plug and connection to PDA), put spade connectors onto the cables instead of the cigarette lighter connections, patched it into the stereo power supply (since it's only hot when running) (I put a 2A fuse inline) made a little case out of duck-tape for it, stashed it above the glove box top and zip tied the gps dongle up inside the dash (actually just beside where the passengers speaker should be if a PO hadn't removed it... I have the grilles but no speakers in there!)

I then routed the PDA cable down, peeled off the cover on the gear stick (manual shift) - I was going to cut a hole in it (it has a hole already from a PO) but i just popped it out of the holder..... so basically all you can see is the PDA cable poking out of the top of the gear stick cover.

I have a wee holder thing for the PDA that I keep meaning to hot glue to that panel (I've tried a million mounting places and that one ended up being best!) so that'll stop it sliding around. I just keep the PDA with me/ in the glove box, then pull it out and plug it in whenever I need it - the GPS is active whenever the car is running so I get a fix practically straight away (especially compared to when I needed to plug into the lighter socket) and it's soooo much easier than messing around with cables, sliding out the ash tray etc etc.

[doogie]

Right, new stat in, good bleed and my gauge still doesn't go past quarter way (and I have new brown and blue temp sensors so that shouldn't be an issue)

Incidentally, (possibly related) I have an cabin heating issue....... my fan works fine on all speeds, the temp wheels seem to do nothing, and the top and bottom sliders always give out hot air and the middle slider always gives out cold (I've tried changing both the temp wheel position and it doesn't make any difference) - I regulate cabin heating by moving the sliders around and changing the fan speed rather than using the temperature wheels (no AC)

Does that give any pointers to this problem? Shot/ clogged heater matrix or something ?

Cheers :-)

[doogie]

Huh?

I was replying to bimmerd00d's request for a pic of my PDA setup. :)

Literally, all you can see is the PDA connector cable poking out of the gear stick cover, so it's not really picture worthy... although I may still do one. :)

[632 Regal]

top one all the way to the right is defrost.
middle one is the vents.
bottom is floor vents.

Still kinda sounds like air in the system but you have heat...hmmm.

How big of a hole did you drill in the stat?

[doogie]

Yeah, I only have heat out of the top and bottom, not the middle.... the middle all the way to the right gives cold.

I will try some more bleeding, but I've bled coolant out of the the tstat housing and then out of the radiator bleed.

It was a small hole in the stat.... and as far as I'm aware of, I've *never* had the gauge at 1/2 way since I bought the car six months ago, it has always been at quarter, and this is the second stat.... and this is with the first one not drilled and then drilled. Think I used a 2.5mm drill bit which was the smallest thing I had to hand.