Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Collected Percy the Porsche this afternoon, service manager said that it's cleaner than a lot of cars that have just come out of the body shop, which was nice of him.

They cleaned and reproofed the hood, which looks like new now.

Tomorrow is race day, the e39 decided to not start as we went to trailer it. EWS has shit the bed. Swapped it over, along with the ignition and ECU from another e39 and we now have crank but still no spark. Absolutely gutted. 6 months building up to this and the car shits the bed at the final hurdle.

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Looking very, very sharp.

@Tenderloin

I had a thought about your Tesla Y the other day. Have you checked tyre pressure since you got it? Mine arrived with pressure around 50-52!

Set back to the recommended of 42 and it was much better.

Ah bollox. Hope you can get sorted for next race window dude. Marlboro man will ride again

Thanks! It’s so much fun to drive, even if it’s the 911 that everyone hates.

Yeah, everyone's gutted. There's usually complications but really rare to get completely stumped. And weird to manage to get it to crank but not start.

Anyone got any ideas? Pulled the ignition and the EWS unit off another e39, along with the main EWS unit from under the glovebox and the ECU, with all that plugged in it gets to crank. Weirdly it doesn't show the revs on the rev counter, so we swapped the crank sensor but it made no difference.

It seems that there's a key reader around the ignition - made up of 2 parts, the key reader round the keyhole and the small ews unit beside it, and then a main EWS under the glovebox. We've robbed all that off a donor car and just plugged it in hanging below the existing one.
Annoyingly the donor ECU is a bit suspect (after a reverse polarity incident) so we're not sure if it would be an appropriate fix if all the bits were definitely working. We're also not getting fuel pressure any more (which I think we did even with it immobilised), but I think that's an inherited problem from donor.

Need to establish, are the EWS, key and ECU definitely coded together? Also, whats really annoying is that on facelift e39s with EWS 2, theres a much more straightforward immobiliser bypass (single wire job).

There's companies that offer EWS bypass but you need to send all the bits and keys off to get coded out.

Not the most cohesive of posts, tired and still stumped. Gonna go and rag some cars around anyway. Fuck it. We go again.

Epic. Nice draughtsmanship.

On the M chat, and everyone has probably seen this, but this is baffling. A level of richness that is hard to comprehend.

https://youtu.be/dNzVaEA9Gug

Is it pumping fuel?

The car is looking great. Suuuuper clean

Don’t think so. Pretty sure we got fuel pressure with the original gear even with the immobiliser kicking in. And I think the donor car wasn’t getting fuel pressure either.

At 10pm in the rain, it was a case of trying anything we could.

That’s shmee150?! I’d heard of him, assumed he was a handsome early 30s, dad’s money Home Counties guy like Mr JWW and that lot but he’s all fluffy and nice.

Spoke to mechanic, reckon we’re gonna try and get someone down to try and flash it out, no point sending it off as we need to check it works.

Fuck me tho. Had a lot of fun today.

Failing to keep my mates merc on track. Welded diffs are fun.

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A right barrel o’laffs. Hope you get the bimmer sorted!

Fuck yeah that is awesome. Love it that someone filming that from the boot of something else.

Good luck getting the Marlborough machine sorted. It will happen

At least you had some time to burn off the frustration! It'll get sorted... And possibly something ridiculous and simple, the usual way these things go.

Not the same, but I'm with you in electronics pain. The family car, a 2015 Audi A4, has been off the road for two weeks because of a failed airbag control module that won't accept re-programming. Right after a spent a chunk of cash fixing the failed dual mass flywheel. Cars eh?

Properly mounted rear facing seat: hilarious, ingenious and terrifying.

Just gonna have to grasp the nettle and get after it. It’s too much fun not to have my own car.
At least it gives me time to weld the diff too.

These 11th hour electrical gremlins are the stuff of nightmares, given me a blown clutch, gearbox, something in the driveline all day, hard work but you know what you need to do just have to get it, electrical stuff is mega frustrating.

Could be you've caught a wire somewhere when prepping, something between ecu/crank position/ignition comfort pack box or the RF reader on the ignition column, or key got damaged and thats caused it to not recognise it anymore. Done any welding recently?

There is a guy on YouTube - Samcrac who fixes cars. I think he did a BMW which had electrical faults - it might be worth having a look at his vid to give yourself ideas of what to check. From memory, a random fault in one part of the car was caused by issues in the boot - how people fix electrical probs in cars is a constant source of amazement to me.

Plenty potential for catching wires tbh, although not really between ecu and engine, the exposed bits of loom are in the cabin rather than round the engine (with the exception of bits around the dash). And the car got wetter than usual in a big downpour - easily done with all glass and many seals removed and just lives under a tarp weighed down with tyres for waterproofing. So water damage to the electrics is definitely a suspected cause of them gremlins, especially in the glovebox area where the EWS and fuses live.
Only welding done was the battery cage, which was obviously done with battery disconnected.
We got it to crank by swapping the ignition unit (including RF key reader), ECU and EWS from another car.
I have two keys and neither worked. And There wasn’t really any work done on it between it being fine and it not working.
Literally started first time for 6 months then died when we go to trailer it lol.

Is it worth looking at something like an Emerald ECU? Minimum required to run the car, no security stuff, just pull the ECU out when parking the car up.

Security isn’t an issue, we just leave the keys on the seats lol.

I half wondered about something like that. But I imagine the outlay would be a bit impractical for a £500 car. Any idea at what you’d be looking at, cost wise?

We’re going to endure for now, as there’s another lad that manual swapped his e39 that needs some ECU flashing done as well. We’ll see if we can get someone to come to us because they’re not really normal cars in the state they’re in.