I have officially given up on getting the coolant temp gauge to work on a 92 325i engine. There is a problem in the wiring and it's just not worth any more grief. Can a Universal Auto Parts Store mechanical gauge be screwed into the temp sender hole on this car? Or possibly adapted if the thread size for the sender is known? It would be nice to do a real oil pressure gauge and voltmeter as well. Has anyone been successful with this, your input much appreciated. The coolant temp. is my main concern.
try www.leatherz.com He has gauge packages sold in kits. The minute I find the extra money I'm going to get his kit for the E46: oil pressure, oil temperature and volts. Includes all the necessary parts to do the install. With a little luck he may even have a water temp gauge! Cheers and good luck!
I have found that getting coolent temperture gages kits for E36/E46 BMWs is problematic; they don't seem to be desired. I installed a coolent temp gauge in my old E36, but I had to drill and tap a hole for the generic sensor in the thermostat housing. I would like to install a coolent temp gauge in my E46 as well, but haven't found any DIYs for it. I found coolent and oil temp gauges to be useful. The coolent temp gauge read when the outside of the engine was warm and the oil temp gauge read when the inside of the engine is warm. Knowledge of both can be useful. Let me know if you find a coolent gauge kit for a E46!
I forgot to mention this.. You could go to www.dashhawk.com and check out their product that plugs into the obc port and can be configured to show a number of parameters. To see if your vehicle can use this device you'll have to check your obd port pins as few BMWs are on their supported vehicles list but a quick inspection of the obd port may find your vehicle being able to use this. Just grabbing for straws at this point...I found about this thing because I also drive a Mazdaspeed 3 and the kids are all using this thing to keep track of boost,temps etc. Cheers!
