most likely dead dme?

[eurokevin]

it's been raining a lot in my area and i've already had the wet dme problem.i've cleaned the cowl and removed that stupid tube that always gets clogged. the only time the dme got wet was when i first bought it back in 2007, since then no problem.

I was driving home from work yesterday and about a mile away from my house the car started to run badly and can't hold an idle. after stalling it like 3 times just trying to get home, i finially made it.just to stall another 2 times getting in the driveway lol.

the things that were checked were:
1. pulled maf while it was running and it died.
2.swapped fuel pump relay and it died.
3.pulled coil wires one by one while it was running.
4.replaced coils with used m3 coils with much less miles.
5. removed dme and cleaned.

when i removed the dme, it had a small amount of corrosion but it was dry.when we did tested number 3, we found out it was running on only 2 cylinders...Now, is it the ecu that controls firing the coils? or am i misunderstanding how the car runs? is there something else that i can check to rule out the dme?

[flyfishvt]

sounds like the DME. You're correct that the DME controls the firing. If you had two cylinders not firing and you swapped coils with no change then I'd say its the DME. The coils get their signal directly from it. The only two tests you could do are to move the coils around and see if the problem follows the coils or you could try and find a known good DME and swap it in. Chances are the corrosion you found took a while to do its dirty work. That's why it was dry.

Red Label 413 DME's are pretty easy to find. You can usually pick up a used one for well under $100. Check the classifieds here or start looking at junk yards.

[eurokevin]

Yea, that's what I feared.I. just hoping that it didn't destroy my tms chip too.that would be my luck if it did.

[flyfishvt]

I doubt it hurt the chip. Any chance you still have the stock chip?

[eurokevin]

Yes, I still have it somewhere

News flash, it is not the dme. Now I've done a little more research on what is going on and 2 things could be happening.1. My engine ground is frayed,rusting, and coroded.2. Even though I have no codes, the cam position sensor sensor has been known to go bad without a code.now the car has 194,000 exactly sitting in my driveway lol. I don't want to throw parts at it, but it seems like this could be another lead. going to replace the ground wire tonight if I can get some crimps for it, and ill replace the cam position sensor if this doesn't help.

Another update.ground wire did absolutely nothing in terms of making the car work.however, now I dont have to worry about that wire for a while lol.

[eurokevin]

new camshaft position sensor did nothing. im now officially stumped. only running off of 2 cylinders with new dme and cps.what else could i be missing?

On another note though, there was a few metal shavings stuck to the cps when i removed it from the head. so im thinking the damage is already done....

[93BMWE36]

Hey my dme got soaked and I have a TMS chip to and the chip still works. PM I have an extra working DME I'll sell you

[eurokevin]

Thanks for the offer, but I already got another working dme and it wasn't the problem.

[eurokevin]

ok, my mechanic did a compression test. cylinder number fives sparkplug was hit, so more than likely a dropped valve and had 0 psi.and i had 90 and 100 psi on 2 other cylinders. so now the bmw is going int othe garage next to the supra for an engine swap later down the road, and now im looking at getting a newer car.