no start
 

I have a 95 318TI 5 speed, 148k miles. I recently bought it have put about 1k miles on it. Last Friday it seemed like I used an abnormal amount of gas on the way home and could smell gas while I was driving. I noticed when I came to a stop the idle would dip down a little bit then return to normal. Sunday I started the car to see if I still smelt gas...nothing. Monday morning my car wouldn't start.

I have tried everything I can think of and read to try. I pulled the back seat and felt the fuel pump while the car is cranking and I can feel the fuel pump kicking on. I am getting spark and my compression is even all the way across...

I had a little bit of starting fluid left and I tried spraying that in and actually got a little cough from the car when I tried starting it (which seemed like some progress).

Any suggestions on further troubleshooting this? Would a bad fpr cause a no start?

Trying to think if the 95 had two coolant temperature sensors or just the single 4 pin. If it has two separate coolant temperature sensors, you could flip them and see if it starts, otherwise, you could jump the circuit with a resistor to see if itll start the car, tested with the resistor that indicates "at operating temperature".

Yeah it has two coolant temp sensors...I just replaced the one to the ECU a couple weeks ago. I tried swapping them and still no luck.

So I decided to test the fuel pressure to see if the fuel pump was weak. I bypassed the fuel filter when doing this ( to get the pressure where the fuel filter is) and my car started right up. I just replaced the fuel filter about a week prior to this...so am kind of perplexed as to why the fuel filter would get clogged so quickly. I believe I installed it right, the arrow was facing the engine.

I replaced the filter and have put a couple hundred miles on the new filter.