[Crighto]

Hello all,

I purchased my 95 318Ti back in May this year. I come from playing with mazda’s (2011 Mazdaspeed3) and subaru’s (2015 WRX). This is my first BMW and first true project (not daily driven).

I made a lot of newb mistakes with purchasing this car (to eager to find PC and failed to ask some important questions). The long and short, the car is a basket case, but fun (correction) was fun to drive around town.

Currently, I’m dealing with it failing to turn over (you know lights come on starter just doesn’t do anything). Yes, I have searched around and see it could be the key, the security system, the crash relay, starter, etc. So, while starting to to trouble shoot I found the starter to be hanging part way out of the flywheel housing and decided the best way for me to get to it was remove the intake (I wanted to do this anyway to replace some hoses). Now for the real puzzling find. The injectors are the vacuum style from the M44 which most likely means the engine is an M44, but the car is def. OBD1 with that ugly-ass AFM housing off the air box.... not sure if someone just swapped in an M44, but it also has the metal housing for the thermostat and the metal housing for the oil filter. Anything I can look for to fully determine the engine?

Other things done to the car before I got it:
H&R springs, Neuology Spark Plug Wires (the ones with the individual grounds), I believe different chip (it has no rev limit...), honestly who knows....

Things I’ve done:
Replaced rear shock upper mounts (one was blown out), spark plugs, the oil housing gasket and o-ring, front struts, full tie rod assemblies (both sides), sway bar links front and rear, clutch master and slave cylinders (reverse bleeding is awesome), just did the battery while trying to figure out why it wouldn’t start and a hand full of other things I can’t think of right now.

Thanks for listening.
-Brian