Re: E36 M3 coils/ECU (was Fadeev's thread)

[XYOBGYN@xxxxxxx]

Early E36 cars definitely had problems with weak coil packs.

What is particularly frustrating is that they can fail, and take down the ECU 
with them as well. 

I have seen this on several early E36 cars, M3 and non M3.  In this 
particular situation, I'd actually try and borrow 6 coils from a donor car 
and swap them in, see if that fixes the problem.  Incidentally, my local 
mechanic at the dealer feels that if you get lucky, and the ECU is still 
fine, count your blessings, but replace ALL 6 coils, not just the damaged one 
since one of others may go soon, and blow out the ECU.

Simply moving the suspect coil to a new location won't necessarily change the 
error code since the ECU may all ready be damaged at that location's relay or 
whatever gets damaged within the ECU.    Likewise, it may be handy to have a 
spare ECU at the car's side to swap that in too.  This is where the dealer's 
have an edge, as the modic can easily reprogram the EWS to recognize a new 
ECU, whereas its not so simple for the private shops to accomplish.

(The EWS is a whole 'nuther story)  Theoretically, if your donor car's ECU 
and EWS box were swapped temporarily, you could use the donor car's key to 
start up in a spare key ring/antenae, and then use the new ECU.  For obvious 
reasons, I wouldn't put the suspect coils in your friends car.... it might 
take out his/her ecu.

Hope this helps!

Alex Lipowich
91 Z1
95 M3 Euro 3.2 LTW  ASR #8
97 Z3 2.8

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