There’s nothing quite like going out to your car and finding that what was once a perfectly functional automobile has decided to take a leave of absence from that role. At best, it’s a mild inconvenience. At worst, it becomes understandable why Basil Fawlty attacked his Austin 1100 with a privet branch. I guess it was only a matter of time before something would go wrong on my thirdhand BMW 335i daily driver, and last week seemed to be the time.
Credit where credit’s due, six trouble-free months with a 17-year-old German car known to have a fiddly reputation is pretty good. Alright, I did have to swap a light bulb and replace a cheap window regulator, but those both feel like normal car things. My Crown Vic blew three out of four regulators, resulting in true keyless entry via banging on the window hard enough that it dropped down its tracks. At the same time, 17 years isn’t bad for a taillight bulb, but none of these common items are stuff that would stop a car from running.
The symptoms on the 335i were simple: It would crank hard enough it might go blind, but no sign of firing. Now, this is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Sure, it means the issue isn’t simply a dead battery, but it also means that the issue isn’t parasitic drain.
The first order of business was to see if I could hear the fuel pump run, and after that seemed fine, the next step was to plug in a good scanner and look at the data.
According to the low-pressure fuel sensor, fuel pressure at the rail was no bueno, and when combined with a lack of codes, it likely pointed toward a bad low-pressure fuel pump rather than a sensor failure. Still, there was this seed of doubt. Without a gauge for the rail, wouldn’t it just be a guess? I could hear the electric fuel pump powering on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s providing enough output.
Plus, there was another problem. I was still getting over illness, and I frankly couldn’t be bothered to see this through with my own two hands. While you don’t have to drop the fuel tank to change the low-pressure fuel pump on an E9x BMW, one slip and I’d have a cabin spritzed in eau du octane. Oh, and I had places to be over the weekend, and 3,600 pounds of 335i was in the way of the Porsche. Yep, this was a job for someone else.
Thankfully, because I rarely jump into things without at least knowing the basics of what I’m getting into, I know that the Canadian equivalent of AAA (imaginatively named CAA) offers a black card. Is it overkill? Probably, but four 124-mile tows and a 198-mile tow per year for $149 Canadian seems like good insurance to have when your fleet consists of cars sane people don’t buy. One quick call, and it was towed to a specialist who confirmed my suspicions.
Turns out, it really was the low-pressure fuel pump. It’s a comically ’90s-esque failure on a relatively modern car, but yet, here we are. Not a bang, not a catastrophically expensive bill for something like the $1,200 high-pressure fuel pump, but a whimper. This time, I won the game of “comma or no comma,” and the results are noticeable. The pump must’ve been getting weak because straight away, the car just felt more responsive. No idea why it didn’t set any codes, but considering the previous owner recently replaced the high-pressure fuel pump, perhaps the low-pressure pump was just a matter of time.
So, what’s the lesson here? Well, sometimes it really is just a fuel pump. Maybe not all of those Marketplace listings claiming the same need are spouting nonsense. Also, sometimes it’s nice to just farm a job out to the pros. Sure, it costs more money than doing it yourself, but turnaround time is tight, and it frees up time to do other things like housework and, um, work-work. In my case, it also came with an unusual affirmation that I bought a good car. One of the technicians who can rebuild an N5x engine in his sleep asked for first right of refusal if I ever sell the 335i. If that isn’t a sign that I’ve done okay, I don’t know what is.
Top graphic image: Thomas Hundal, eBay
Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member.
At least its the low pressure fuel pump. The HPFP replacement on the N54 is not a cheap or trivial matter. At least they should have resolved most of the flaws in the original high pressure pump design by the time the previous owner had it replaced.
Yeah, my first thought was HPFP when I was reading which made me shudder.
Low pressure fuel pumps on BMWs are actually a fairly common failure. I got really good at not getting any gasoline on the interior of them at the BMW dealership (Harbor Freight moving blankets are great for that).
After the THIRD mechanical fuel pump I have installed on my 67 CJ5 in about 7 years of ownership died, I put an inline electric pump on the damn thing to be done with it. At least if that dies, it is an easier swap. The mechanical unit has one bolt that is damn near impossible to get to.
My favorite E9x failure was the “Poke-ball” error…my 2006 had the electric steering lock failure code, which looked nothing like a steering wheel and very much like a Pokeman ball to my then 10 year old, This was all because the car couldn’t read where the lock was. Bricked the car. After much concern and research about needing to replace the column (because of course the lock wasn’t serviceable!) I replaced the battery and everything was bueno again. After getting it re-coded, of course, because BMW.
I don’t know the fear and drama of “Comma or no comma” in my non-BMW owning life. If yours is a prime example of one, I’ll stay away from them all thanks. I haven’t had a window regulator go bad in any vehicle in over 30 years of driving except in my MK3 VW GTI. Those issues can stay in the 90’s as far as I’m concerned. I can’t imagine they drive that well to justify the repair bills and inconvenience of either ruined weekends wrenching or ruined budgets.
“The symptoms on the 335i were simple: It would crank hard enough it might go blind, but no sign of firing. Now, this is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Sure, it means the issue isn’t simply a dead battery, but it also means that the issue isn’t parasitic drain.”
Not always. The early 2000s Ford Taurus / Mercury diSabled would notoriously crank and crank, but not fire, and the problem turned out to be a bad Motorcraft battery. Turns out, the starter would engage just fine at 10-ish volts, but the fuel pump would not.
Therefore, when those batteries had a cell go bad, which was common, the car would crank, but not start. But as soon as you hooked up a set of jumper cables to a vehicle that had 12 volts available, Viola, the cars would start right up. And once the alternator was spinning, there was >12V available so they would keep running.
Sometimes, if you only shut them off for less than an hour, there would be enough juice in the battery for the fuel pump to work, but after a day at work, or an overnight? Nope. Needs a jump-start every time.
Many fuel pumps were replaced on these vehicles. And boy, did the mechanics feel stupid when they still wouldn’t start afterwards.
This makes me think I should proactively replace the 20 yo fuel pump on my Boxster. We had a series of E9x sedans. They were all reliable, despite us throwing 20k mikes a year at them.
But I’m a fiend for maintenance.
Replacing OE parts with those of questionable quality is not necessarily a good idea; replacing a working OE part with another OE part is a waste of money.
But purchasing said OE part and having it available for replacement is kind of a gray area. I have done this with some of the older cars, especially those that are sort of rare and hard to find parts for. Water pumps for the Aluminum LS 5.3 is an example. Makes no sense to me why they could not have just made do with the basic silverado aluminum water pump that bolts to the ubiguitous LM7 Iron 5.3.
“It would crank hard enough it might go blind”
Generations of male adolescent fear bottled in this one clause.
“Are we still doing phrasing?” -Archer
Oh good, so I wasn’t alone in where my mind immediately went.
I didn’t get it until your comment. Very good.
I had a weird fuel pressure issue recently on the racecar. I am still running the stock type pump, which uses a combination fuel filter and pressure regulator. I wanted to change the fuel pressure, so I swapped in a good used OEM filter/regulator which was designed for the pressure value that I wanted. I already had it on the shelf and it was working fine about 3 years ago. After the swap, I could hear the pump running but the engine wouldn’t start. There was no fuel pressure and no fuel being delivered to the fuel rail. It turned out that the pressure regulator (inside the filter unit) was bypassing all of the pumped fuel back to the return. A new filter/regulator unit fixed it.
Another reason why I will probably not buy a BMW, Mercedes or an Audi.
Sure, they are nice, but they cost a lot to maintain (it varies of course, but generally). With BMW, the I6 engines are superb , but the electronics is a different situation.
Anyways, that is probably why I might prefer a Lexus or a Cadillac (a good model year- the 3.6 isn’t the easiest to work on and DOES have its issues, and yes, there is the infamous Northstar for the DTS), but in most cases I won’t have Lexus cash money….
Come on, man. It’s accessible from under the rear seat bottom. Takes an hour, tops.
Either fix the pump yourself and write about that or just write about something else. David Tracy has a baby and is building a Jeep from scratch.
I mean he was getting over an illness from what I read, and wanted a working car. Life isn’t always going to make things easy, and if you feel like crap, then diagnosing and fixing isn’t always a good option.
You didn’t actually read the article, did you?
The last time I attempted to perform any work on my car while I was sick, I ended up creating an inch-long gash in my thumb that still exists in the form of a scar and missing nerve endings. Knowing when to bail on a repair is peak car wisdom.
Fawlty Towers; nice flex. I hear they have farty towels.
Is this show a forgotten gem? Only 12 episodes across two seasons multiple years apart. If you are a John Cleese fan, search this out.
Hmm. I figured basically any Python fan knew Fawlty Towers, but I also got my intro to Python the way MANY Gen-X Americans did: MANY PBS stations across the US would show Dr Who, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers on Sunday nights.
As for Cleese fans, it’s gotten harder to be one over the years as Cleese has decided not to just let his work speak for him.
You either die a Python or live long enough to become Basil Fawlty.
Fawlty Towers was the show (along with the various Blackadders) which stopped me watching Monty Python, because it made me realize that British comedy is a lot funnier with a plot.
Don’t forget Red Dwarf!
Don’t mention the war.
Got any valuables … any bricks?
I espeak Eengleesh bery well. I learnt it from a book.
I learned Eengleesh from a siberian hamster
I had a Volvo 245 that had a low pressure in tank pump and high pressure external pump. It had an issue where it would start sputtering once it got down to half a tank. I thought I’d have to replace the in tank pump, but no. The problem was simpler than that. The line from the low pressure pump to outside of the tank had disintegrated, creating an internal fuel leak. The fix was about 2 in of new fuel line. The guy at Autozone didn’t even charge me for the line since it was sold by the foot. This of course was after some failed troubleshooting attempts and parts I didn’t need to buy, but I was still learning to wrench at the time. I miss that Volvo.
Pre-OBD wisdom: Always load the parts cannon cheapest fix first.
Sounds reasonable and normal to me for a car that old. I count those kinds of simple fix things almost as victories. And now you know that part is new!
*20 year old electric fuel pump shits itself*
*costs typical fuel pump prices to fix, no surprises*
Car Internet: IT’S BECAUSE IT’S GERMAN!!!!
This is a few posts up: “Another reason why I will probably not buy a BMW, Mercedes or an Audi.”
Lol.
Whatever. Old cars break and need fixing. In other news, the sky is blue and the sun rises in the East and sets in the West every day.
My e88 had a wheel speed sensor fail the other day at 15 years old. Oh well. $30 and 15 minutes to fix it with an OE Bosch sensor.
The family heirloom Crown Vic (a ’99) experienced the classic ’90s Ford fuel pump failure: Suddenly with zero warning, in the middle of an intersection. I would have LOVED for it to be as easy to replace as on a euro car. It’s a “drop the tank” exercise on that crock.
I did one on a ’93 Z28 and not only is it a drop the tank, it’s a drop the whole rear end so you can even get to dropping the tank exercise. Probably would have cost more than Thomas’s repair had I taken it to a shop.
Yeah I made sure to change my fuel pump on my 89 Firebird when swapping in a Ford 9in since I already had that down better off just of just replacing the old pump with a newer higher flowing one. Also I was not going to be one of those people that cuts a fuel door in the back would prefer not to hack up my car even more haha.
There’s an easier way:
https://www.theautopian.com/why-people-cut-holes-into-their-cars-trunk-floors-even-though-it-could-kill-them/
Got to love cars with no thought to repairability. Kind of surprising in the fleet manager favorite though. You would have thought there would be an access hatch.
As I have long said – nobody should have to drive a Panther unless they are wearing a uniform and getting paid. 😉
Nobody should have to drive a Panther
LOL – I don’t entirely disagree, but the accountant in me would love running a fleet of them.
The absolute worst car that is oddly loved by the Internet Peanut Gallery for some utterly bizarre reason.
They’ve likely never driven one, as well as never driven an actually good car – and thus the legend of their greatness festers
As usual, we think alike. 🙂
I drove one once, it was fine. If you’re looking for a cheap, durable car, you could sure as hell do worse. Of course, that was 20 years ago, so most are trash at this point.
Instead, I ended up with a ’79 Pinto (it was “free”) and later an ’85 Caprice that was wonderful. But I’m sure plenty of people would label those as crap, too.
Yeah, that’s true. Maybe part of my distaste is how disappointing it turned out to be vs. the legend.
It is or was a cheap beater with a V8, especially in P71/P7B police interceptor guise, and like the taxi cab versions they were highly durable unless they blew out the spark plugs like most of that eras mod motors. Therefore it appealed to different groups, some who wanted to cosplay as a cop, and some who just wanted a cheap V8 with RWD, etc.
Nothing about that makes them a good car. V8s are astonishingly overrated, especially lazy inefficient detuned ones as stuffed into those lumps.
As Dan Roth said above – mostly people who don’t know any better. If you want to cosplay as a cop, cosplay as a German or British one and get a BMW wagon.
Never said it was a good car, just that I can see why people would love them at least the theory of them.
As George Carlin always said – imagine how dumb the average person is, then realize that half are dumber than that. The bottom half includes those who love these pigs.
Even the spark plug thing is easily rectified. Our 2005 Town Car blew a spark plug. We had it helicoiled and back on the road the next day.
That said, I really do not enjoy Panthers. I think they are crude and poorly styled, with (even for the P71 suspension) barge-like handling.
Agreed. Old car problems are old car problems. I own an 80s Jaguar, and the whole unreliability schtick has gotten a bit stale. Mechanically it has been super solid and I’ve been able to fix a good number of the dumb old car things that go wrong myself. I’m certain I’d have just as many problems if not more with any other car of the same vintage.
I’m pretty proud of the fact that this weekend I was able to replace a missing plastic windshield wiper nozzle cover with one that I CAD modeled and 3D printed myself.
I own a 30yo Land Rover Discovery (and had a P38a Range Rover before that). Both perfectly fine for reliability. The Disco leaks some, it has the occasional minor issue like this summer the driver’s door window quit moving. Took the door panel off and it was just that a rubber bumper had fallen off and jammed the gears. No big thing. Spent a lot of money on the brakes a couple years ago, but that was mostly my own fault – I drove it in a salty slushy storm then put it away without washing it for three months while I was at my other house. Calipers seized up, and the rotors were worn anyway. I decided to practice the credit card fix and let a shop deal with it. Only hurts for a minute! It starts every time and gets me there and back.
Would I daily one per se? No, but I wouldn’t DEPEND on any 30yo car, not even a Camry. Old cars break. Fact of life.
That’s really cool that you were able to 3d print that nozzle! I have both resin and filament printers, but I have no dived into design yet, just printed out lots of other people’s stuff. Someday. I do have a stack of stuff to 3d print for my new garage though. Just got the filament printer for that purpose, haven’t even taken it out of the box yet.
So very happy I got my Audi/Bmw/Porsche time out of the way back when before these vehicles became a nightmare AND an Albatross around your neck.
There is an Audi 80 Quattro still hanging around in all it’s analog pre-nanny state glory…
Well maintained, older BMWs are not albatrosses…they just require more love than other marques. I have no experience with audi or porsche. For those of us that dabble in them, the payoff is well worth driving a that product over a Rogue, or altima, or, camry, or…..
No, thanks. I am comforted in my memories of a time when all replacement parts could be trusted and there were no fanboys burning through the entire stock of good used parts.
I’m sorry the bad bmw man touched you that way. *hug*
I don’t believe the time you described every really existed. But, enjoy the nostalgia regardless!
Or not. My ’11 e91 that I bought new has needed a battery as the only out of pocket “repair” cost to date. Not that it couldn’t puke up a fuel pump tomorrow. At this point it owes me nothing. My ’11 e88 that I bought used has been a little more troublesome (but went four years from purchase to last year needing absolutely nothing but scheduled maintenance), but it’s also lived a much harsher life in hot as blazes South TX and SW FL all it’s life. So not surprisingly some bits have suffered in the heat vs. my e91 that has always lived in cold Maine. All I have replaced on the e88 in five years of ownership are the rear shocks, a windshield washer pump, and now two wheel speed sensors. I replaced the battery proactively when I bought it five years ago because it was original at a decade old. Also a couple other known issues done proactively on both cars – OFHG and serp belt tensioners. Both very cheap to DIY.
Not sure how a generic Japanese turdmobile would really be any better. Heck, in it’s formative years my wagon was more reliable than the Prius V that my mother bought at the same time that had similar miles on it. That thing got towed to the mother ship a few times for software caused no start issues, and was a symphony of squeaks and rattles from new. It had issues with the rear calipers seizing -they got replaced twice. Mine did get towed once, though oddly only because I couldn’t fit in the seat and drive it. A power seat relay failed, and fiddling with it I moved the seat all the way forward and couldn’t move it back. So I made the dealership come get it and bring me a loaner. Otherwise, under warranty it got a headlight washer nozzle replaced, and two door gaskets. Under maintenance warranty it got new brakes all around after I parked it seaside for a week at a conference and the rotors rusted up, then the rust came off unevenly causing vibration. Nice of BMW to cover that, I was surprised.
Though that said, I have less than zero interest in the science project that is an early N54-engined BMW. Even if they are MUCH better now than they were when new. No thanks, an N51/52 is plenty of motivation for me when combined with the proper transmission, aka one you shift yourself.
And I would own one of THOSE N54 cars before I bought a VW with delusions of grandeur and needless complexity. Much as I do like some actual VWs (deeply regret selling my ’17 GTI Sport to this day – I was a dumbass). There has never been an Audi I had any real interest in owning, and based on friends with them they uphold the German car reputation quite nicely. One of my idiot friends uses mainly Audis in his Turo business, and at one point had THREE Q5s in the shop at the same time for major engine issues. One blown turbo, two with bad timing chains.
I replaced the fuel pump prophylactically in my n52 equipped 07 X3 at ~150k miles, and she’s still kicking now at 215k miles. From my days in the e39 M5 world, the dead fuel pump is truly not a question of it, but when.
It’s getting harder and harder to find good aftermarket fuel pumps, and of course the OEM ones are super expensive. A friend with a Nissan Sentra went through 4 aftermarkets before getting a good one, and another friend with a Versa went through 3 of them.
It’s not at all hard to do so on BMWs. You find out who made the pump, and you buy it in a Valeo, or Bosch, or Pierburg box instead of a BMW box. And save a bundle in the process.
Yep, in this case, it’s a VDO.
I always admire the patience and sense of humor owners of old German and English cars have about their cars inevitable shit-taking.
They truly are the worlds greatest “glass half-full” people. A toast to you all!
It drives so well when it runs though *sob*
I still love my “insert Tesla model” here 🙂