Firstfives.org

As far as polishing the manifold and runners, I've been told by many it's a sand casting and therefore has a lot of voids and pits throughout, which prevents achieving a mirror-like finish. When I rebuilt my engine a few years ago, I simply had many of those aluminum pieces glass-bead blasted which ...

Some follow ups here: I took some measurements and found resistance wasn't useful in confirming anything about polarity for the low voltage coil terminals. I measured high voltage center to the low voltage terminals and found 8.8 kOhm in both cases on the 6V coil and found 14 kOhm in both cases on t...

Hey Mike,
Great pics. Good to see the FAQs are still getting used so many years later. Scott Stewart pioneered the conversion; I added the visuals after doing the project myself. Yeah, the E12 ECU is a basically a simple analog computer in a very large box by today's standards.

Awesome schematic, Mike! I particularly like seeing the inside of the coil which both explains 3 terminals, rather than 4 for a basic transformer, with the common node inside and the common node also creates asymmetry and explains a polarity difference for the low voltage terminals with respect to t...

Mike, Thanks for bouncing some ideas. It's definitely a 12V system, but I agree that the polarity issue is probably the most likely cause of my melted wires. In ordering that new 12V coil, I had checked that the Euro 528 coil and U.S. 530i coil are the same part number and I further confirmed that w...

Another detail. Old coil had blk/red wire on the negative terminal and that was a running arrangement. I kept blk/red on the negative terminal on the new coil. All the manual references I have show blk/red on the positive terminal. Perhaps reversed polarity was worse than the attempt without ballast...

Slow going on the Euro 528 project car...Been doing regular drives and dealing with a little bit of Solex 4A1 carb variable behavior. Latest issue is unreliable starting and troubleshooting has isolated it back to the high voltage terminal of the coil and no spark. I'm clearly dealing with some non-...

I've been running the Prestone long-life orange formula since around 1999. It's also an OAT or HOAT forumulation. I've been very happy with it and basically run it in all my vehicles. Engine was rebuilt in that span too and everything looked pretty good on the inside. Since it's free of silicates, y...

I used to frequent BMP, then BavAuto for common maintenance stuff. They're now both extinct. I agree with Mike on Autohaus AZ and RockAuto for common stuff. You might also check Pelican Parts (well liked by E28 guys I know) and ECS Tuning. ECS sort of paired up with BavAuto as BavAuto closed and wer...

I think it would work, but that's a guess. I suspect the black plastic case is more an indicator of much more recent manufacturing than a different part and possibly also a part number supercede to explain that difference too. I can tell you my 77 530i originally had a metal case combo relay too. It...

I also like to jump pins 36 and 39 on the AFM. That bypasses the AFM flap fuel cutoff and you can
test fuel pump operation without starting car. Pump will run with ignition in "ON" position before cranking. Combo relay is certainly a common culprit for your problem, as discussed.

Hey, Tom. Yeah, that's the ICU box. It should have transistors inside - that and the ECU is about
as sophisticated as electronics were in the late 70s. I can take a look in my factory manual this weekend. I've also got a Haynes manual I need to fish out.

I was about to suggest the ignition control unit (ICU) for the transistorized ignition as Mike W is describing. Having seen your car, I know you've got the old school distributor. Next question is whether your distributor has the inductive pickups or the points/condensor. If you have the inductive p...

When I put the Getrag 260/6 I found that the e28 driveshafts had a different profile to the e12, basically the e12 gets narrower before the center bearing where the e28 does not. So the e28 driveshaft might hit that area. You can kind of see it in my picture below, if the driveshaft keeps going for...

Thanks for the responses. I am aware there are a lot of parts that look identical, yet have different part numbers. There are a bunch of parts for the 528i that are the same, but lighter/thinner, than the 530i. Given how rare all these parts are getting, I'll just error on the side of grabbing the E...