Overheating. Searched already. Lots of new...

[NOLB]

I got an e30 318is from a friend of mine. I have spent a couple months rebuilding the head on the side and got her going again. After driving it to work for a month or so (and right as I decided to order it's first mod >.<) it starts overheating, no coolant. So I stop and buy some and get it home. Find the leak, a brand new coolant hose to the heater core, with a clamp. So I put some Rightstuff Seal on it (careful not to get it inside and careful not to put it on while wet. It proceeds to leak around the seal, (and looks like out of the pores of the hose) so I buy some "K-seal". That seems to stop the leak for good within minutes, and my temp climbs to almost red hot at an idle.

I am not sure if bleeding could be my issue? I have not tried sticking it's nose up while bleeding, but have left the bleeder open for a few minutes at a time. Also I loosened the wiring harness to see if any hoses were just squished but no such luck.
Sorry for this lame boring repetitive post, I did a quick search but figured nobody would have all new parts with quite this issue? Guess that's always a good excuse though, sorry in advance.

[deansweet]

Personally, I would pull the radiator and have it inspected at this point.
Never been a big fan of the pour in additives. Tend to block passages in the radiator.
And buy a new hose?

[Tgoode318]

Do you have heat? If so bleeding probably isn't your problem. if you don't  then i would try to bleed again.

What i like to do first when checking a car that is overheating is park the car in a dry space and let it sit over night with coolant up to the fill mark. The next day move the car and see if any coolant is under the car (lazy mans way of checking for a leak) If you see any thing you need to jack the car up put on goggles etc and find the leak and replace w/e it is. 

-Another thing to keep in mind is having the proper mixture of  bmw coolant fluid/distilled water make sure you mixed it correctly as to much coolant can cause overheating.

-Check your Fan/ clutch and ensure proper functionality.  If the clutch goes bad the car will over heat when not moving. To check spin it with one hand it should have some resistance if it just free wheels it will need to be replaced.

- Check to make sure your thermostat is opening & functioning properly.

- If none of the above works then you are going to need to remove your radiator and inspect it.

- lastly check your water pump.

Hope this helps.
-Tgoode

[NOLB]

Update: decided to ball it and drove it to work today. While warming up it started going over the middle line. But almost instantly, from driving, it cooled right back down to middle or a hair over.

Maybe the fan like you said?
I don't like additives either but it was a brand new hose From bmw. And I removed all foreign crap before installing.

I'm pretty sure the fan free spins cold.

[Tgoode318]

If it was ok when you were driving but not while idling A failed fan clutch is the likely culprit.  Instead of replacing it you might want to look into the fan delete kit from understeer.com or bimmerworld It gets rid of the pesky failure prone fan while "freeing" up A HP or two from parasitic drag. It works by deleting your fan and replacing the aux fan's temp sensor & the thermostat with special lower temp ones to compensate for not running a mechanical fan it also has a chemical agent as well "water wetter" that you mix in to the coolant lowering coolant temps. I run this setup on mine and love it i would definitely recommend it.

[NOLB]

Ok so before I condem the fan and spend 200$ on parts, first can we define "some resistance" a little. It spins Pretty freely, but comes to a stop after a good push.
I live in Fresno ca (105 degrees) is the fan delete OK.
And also does it come with a fan or use something else?

[NOLB]

Also does the kit for a 92 318 work? since it's an m42?

[Tgoode318]

The fan clutch is a thermostatic device with a viscous fluid coupling, It can fail in two ways 1. Frozen- (always engaged and cooling/ wasting power, you might notice a slight decrease in mpg & power and increased engine noise) 2. Open- the way yours sounds like it failed (Will not properly engage and cool the engine at idle but once you pick up speed enough cool air will pass through the aux fan and through the radiator cooling your engine back down; once you come to a stop light again or idle for a while it will over heat again.) 

The way the fan works is counter-intuitive because you would think the fan should be very easy to spin when working properly but not in this case, that's why deleting it can help with engine feel (seems to want to rev easier).  To define "some resistance" from my post above, If you give the fan a decent spin (not hard just a normal push) it should want to stop pretty quick 1-2 seconds and you should feel it trying to resist being turned, if it just wants to keep going easily "free wheeling" its shot.

Some thing you can look for visually is any weeping of the viscous fluid as that is also a sign but you might not see anything.

One last thing you can do to check is called the Newspaper test. Personally i'm not a fan of this method *no pun intended* because i can tell by the way its spins by hand, but a number of people swear by it. Take some newspaper and roll it up into a long narrow tube. *Be careful of your hands/fingers while doing this test!!* With the engine at full operating temperature, take the rolled up paper and insert it on the back side of the fan then move it towards the hub avoiding the blades until close to the hub. Push the paper increasing the friction to the hub area of the fan. If the fan CAN be stopped with the Rolled up paper your clutch is bad.

As for the price of the O.E fan $200 bucks that's another reason why i would recommend the delete how ever after looking online a little bit i don't see any kits for the e30 only the e36, I did find a forum thread or two where some e30'ers were talking about doing a delete
http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/archive/index.php?t-56144.html
as far as that goes you will have to do more investigation.
instead of a complete delete you can also look at getting a electric fan that runs off of the battery. It is similar to the complete delete but runs off the battery which eventually means the load is just added to the alternator/charging system but is still much better then the mechanical and i think they are usually cheaper in price, just make sure you get one that can flow enough cfm.

[NOLB]

I went ahead and ordered the delete (asked if it would fit) and it's on the way, along with a new pump.
Thank you guys for the help. I hope this is the fix, hate throwing money at things. Seeing as how it seems fine while moving it's pretty unlikely to be anything that's not about to be replaced or removed
Again, thank you so much. Best forum response I've gotten.
I'll post when I start building it

[Tgoode318]

I hope so too. The good thing about the FMD, you are doing preventative maintenance and getting horsepower at the very least while hopefully solving the problem! The old fan is a ticking time bomb I have read many horror story's about them hitting the shroud and exploding all over the engine bay taking down any thing in its angry fan blade path  .

[NOLB]

Well my fan delete kit arrived yesterday, and I scurried to put it all together. Two hours later I found that the auxiliary fan was not on and she would still overheat, but with the help of the a/c button staying at the halfway point. Looks like an electric fan is in order.

On a worse note, my cel came on and after driving around for a day the car gurgled and died. Seems as though I must have lost power, even though my battery light never came on. Alternator is fine, I'll check the code tomorrow. see what comes up

[Tgoode318]

Ive done the FMD on 3 different cars and one of them (MY 318) I added to much coolant like 55/45 because i was lazy and eye balled it. The Car would run hot as you mentioned and needed the help of the aux fan to keep temps down in the middle. You should try and modify your coolant to water ratio drain some coolant add more water/ water wetter and see if that fixes it.

Also when you bled the system you had the heat running on full blast right? keep pooring fluid into the system with the bleed screw open and the heat running full blast untill you see no more air bubbles coming out of the screw, At that point you should feel heat blowing as well. If ^^ this still dosnt work you need to check the radiator. When i check rads i use a infrared thermometer to scan the surface of the radiator for cold spots. IF you find any cold spots that indicates blocked passages. An old school way to check is to put your hand on different spots of the radiator and feel for cool spots & finally the most professional/expensive way to check is to remove the rad and bring it to a shop for a flow test.

I doubt its blocked though because cooling at speed but not idle is usually a dead give away to it being a fan(air flow) related problem

[NOLB]

I'd love to take your advice Tgood, but since then my car has completely stopped running. bogged to a stop and hasn't started since. Hopefully someone is still following this, I'm getting tired of these problems...

[Tgoode318]

yes unfortunately these cars are very old now and have lots and lots of problems unless they were meticulously maintained. (Which by the very nature of the 318 being the cheapest model you can buy stateside is not likely )
I would recommend you to check out this link which has a link for the full download to the bentley manual; The bentley has tables with the most common symptoms and how to remedy them.
http://www.m42club.com/forum/index.php?topic=2282.0

 here is a couple snapshots from haynes which is another good manual but its not on this site.