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Thread: M3 Thermostat Housing Driving me Nuts

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    Sydney
    Posts
    2
    My Cars
    E46 M3

    M3 Thermostat Housing Driving me Nuts

    Hey guys,

    Long time reader first time poster.

    Recently took it upon myself to try and fix my brothers M3 which has sadly been in the garage, undriven for almost a year and a half, maybe more. It is my brothers absolute pride and joy so I took to it with a diagnostic scanner and found the usual ECT sensor implausible culprit.

    Being fortunate enough to have a decent diagnostic scanner I let the car do it's warm up cycle and found the car warmed up alright, and observed the fan turn on around 62 degrees celcius, which seemed a bit low considering my personal car didn't kick in till about 92.

    Did some reading, found that the thermostat on these things seems to be the usual suspect, so I did another warm up cycle and found the bottom hose would stay rather cold till the fan turned on, when I presume the thermostat would open allowing coolant through the bottom hose at which point top and bottom were warm. So far so good...

    I then went to the OBC just to confirm the diagnostic scanner was reading correctly and to my surprise the OBC temp was reading exactly the same as what the scanner was reading so at this point I ruled out any possibility of the ECT sensor being the issue, although I strongly believe the thermostat is doing it's job I pinned the issue to either:

    A) The thermostat is partially stuck open or
    B) The thermostat is aftermarket and opens sooner, causing the computer to register the CEL because while the thermostat is technically doing its job the car never actually reaches operating temp, which from my small understanding is about 82 degrees celcius on the S54 motor.

    So I thought I'd put my weekend aside and get the tools out and see what was up with the thermostat. Took the 2 hoses off and the 3 bolts off the top of the housing, seemed easy enough but now for the life of me I can't pull the housing off the water pump. It seems to get caught on the TPS sensor bracket on the up side, to the left there's a bolt protruding about half a mm which i cant seem to stick a bolt on to remove it due to the clearance, and if I try to pull the thermostat housing towards the radiator the thermostat seems to be extended down into the water pump which isn't letting me pull the housing any further out.

    I've now dropped my 10 mm somewhere in the engine bay and spent 3 hours looking for it with a magnet and unfortunately it has now been claimed by the engine bay.

    Anyway I'm rambling now, every video or instructional I've seen seems to be doing exactly what I'm doing but it seems its only me that is getting caught on various objects around the housing.

    Anyone have any ideas? I didn't think the fan clutch needed to come out and I honestly can't see it providing any additional space, as the thermostat seems to be stuck inside the water pump housing but is there something I'm not seeing?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    Sydney
    Posts
    2
    My Cars
    E46 M3
    God I'm an idiot... Turns out when I've pried the thermostat housing to try and get it off the water pipe I've pried the water pipe off the block so I need to separate the water pipe from the thermostat so I can lift the thermostat out... Now my issue is that I need the water pipe to secure itself into the block so I can try and pry just the thermostat housing off the pipe.

    Any suggestions?

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