Just wondered if anyone could offer some advice on a problem that's been happeneing with my car for the best part of a year now - basically, I have a major problem cold-starting my 1999 BMW 318Ti Sport Compact (1.9L 16v M44 engine) - I'll give you the background...
The problem tends only to happen on colder days, but essentially the car starts like a dog! It's as if the start has a hard time starting the engine and indeed I've actually taken the car to a BMW dealer 6 months ago to have a diagnostic performed - turns out that cylinders 1 and 3 had a misfire on them and I was advised to change my spark plug leads - we did this and also replaced the plugs, now using 4-pin original BMW OEM plugs - and the same problem remained! I should point out that once the car has been warmed-up, it runs great! If you drive to work in the morning and return to it in the evening to drive home, it's fine!
My dad is a mechanic and he suggested checking for any signs of coolant in the cylinders to check for a potential head gasket problem; however we did this test and there was none. Next step was to perform a compression test of each cylinder - all of them showed around 150psi which is normal... apart from cylinder 3 - this was only showing 50psi!!! However, as before, once the engine has been warmed-up, we chacked the cylinders again and they were all showing around 150psi this time.
We're now stuck as to what to try next - possibly a thinner oil to use? At present it is using 10/40 viscosity; my dad thought maybe a hydraulic fault on one or more of the valves of cylinder 3 could be at fault.
I don't know if you've seen this type of problem before but was hoping you might be able to help shed some light on it - when I had the diagnostic performed on my engine by my local BMW dealer, one of the mechanics there actually warned me that they had seen several similar problems with this model engine on other cars and that it would probably not be economically viable for me to have them look into the fault as by the time they had been able to locate and resolve the issue, I would have to pay more than the car is worth! It's very annoying as it's a great little car and would love to keep it, but I'm worried that if this continues any longer, maybe the time will come when the engine just plain refuses to start!
Many thanks for any help you can offer.
The problem tends only to happen on colder days, but essentially the car starts like a dog! It's as if the start has a hard time starting the engine and indeed I've actually taken the car to a BMW dealer 6 months ago to have a diagnostic performed - turns out that cylinders 1 and 3 had a misfire on them and I was advised to change my spark plug leads - we did this and also replaced the plugs, now using 4-pin original BMW OEM plugs - and the same problem remained! I should point out that once the car has been warmed-up, it runs great! If you drive to work in the morning and return to it in the evening to drive home, it's fine!
My dad is a mechanic and he suggested checking for any signs of coolant in the cylinders to check for a potential head gasket problem; however we did this test and there was none. Next step was to perform a compression test of each cylinder - all of them showed around 150psi which is normal... apart from cylinder 3 - this was only showing 50psi!!! However, as before, once the engine has been warmed-up, we chacked the cylinders again and they were all showing around 150psi this time.
We're now stuck as to what to try next - possibly a thinner oil to use? At present it is using 10/40 viscosity; my dad thought maybe a hydraulic fault on one or more of the valves of cylinder 3 could be at fault.
I don't know if you've seen this type of problem before but was hoping you might be able to help shed some light on it - when I had the diagnostic performed on my engine by my local BMW dealer, one of the mechanics there actually warned me that they had seen several similar problems with this model engine on other cars and that it would probably not be economically viable for me to have them look into the fault as by the time they had been able to locate and resolve the issue, I would have to pay more than the car is worth! It's very annoying as it's a great little car and would love to keep it, but I'm worried that if this continues any longer, maybe the time will come when the engine just plain refuses to start!
Many thanks for any help you can offer.
