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1995 BMW 318i Starter Replacement
58K views
Jan 29, 2023
DIY on replacing the starter on a BMW 318I 1995. This is a pretty difficult job, the worst part is certainly removing "the squid" and keeping track of the dozen wires that run to the motor and the air intake. This job requires a lot of patience, however there are several DIY's that run together with this, such as cleaning out the air intake, replacing fuel injector air lines, and cleaning out several sensors. If done right, at the end of this job you'll feel like you have a new motor if you clean the sensors that you have to remove anyways. There is a coolant hose that runs under the intake manifold that should be replaced as well.
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0:00
Hey viewers, E36 Fanatics here, Steven
0:07
Doing our edit of a video I did back in 2016, one of my first videos on a starter on a four-cylinder B&W E-36
0:17
And the first thing I want to cover is that there's this little debate that goes on on YouTube sometimes and on the BMW forums about whether it's better to go from the top
0:29
from the top changing a starter or do it from the bottom? Well I'm going to tell you
0:35
that I never do it from the bottom. I always do it from the top. It's a real pain
0:39
but here's why I do it. I do it for about five, six reasons really. First off, if
0:46
you're changing your starter, that means it's probably an older car with miles on it
0:50
and it's got other parts that are wearing too. You got a ton of wear parts underneath
0:56
your intake manifold that you have to remove. move to get to your starter in the first place. Like your idle control valve, your
1:04
knock sensors are in the area, you have a coolant connector underneath the intake
1:09
manifold that goes bad and if it goes bad you can't drive the car at all until
1:14
you change the coolant connector. You have your fuel injectors that probably
1:19
need to be cleaned. You have air hoses that go to your fuel injectors that
1:24
probably need to be replaced. There's a lot of things that potentially need to be
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be replaced under your intake manifold and in that area that you don't service if you try and
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get it from the bottom. The other reason is I think that getting it from the bottom is just
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as time consuming or maybe a little less time consuming than getting it from the top, but you
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don't get any of the other maintenance repairs and fixes that you do from just getting it from
1:50
the top. So that's why when I fix, replace a starter, I always just do it from the top. It's a real pain
1:58
the first time and it's not a very pleasant job, but at all honesty, after the first time or two
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you do it, it's really not bad at all. Another thing that I like to tell people is to make your
2:12
job a whole lot easier. There's a couple things you should do. First off, when you're starting to
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remove it, when you're planning to remove a starter and remove your fuel rail and everything, go ahead
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and depressurize your fuel system. That's one of the most obvious things to do before you actually
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pull the battery, before you disengage the battery, go ahead and depressurize your fuel system
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That way, when you pull your fuel rail off, you're not getting a ton of fuel coming out when you pull it off
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And then the other thing that I really like to do when I'm doing this job is I like to actually remove the
2:48
alternator. And the reason for that will become plain once you're messing around with the lower intake
2:54
manifold and trying to remove it. And that's because to remove the lower intake manifold, you have to
3:00
first remove the starter wires on the starter. Well, it's really hard to get clearance to do that when you
3:06
got this little space here. That's why I remove the alternator. It makes it a whole lot easier to do that
3:12
Now, last but not least, I apologize for the end of the video where I've actually pulled the
3:18
starter. I know it's a slim version. It's because when I first started making videos, I was still
3:24
learning how to do them and I wasn't making them the same way I do now
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Hope you all enjoyed the rest of this video If you do please like comment and subscribe First thing we do here is we going to go ahead and pull fuse number
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Well, it depends on your model. I'm going to want you to check just to make sure
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But on this car, you go on the fuel pump and it's fuse number 18
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You're going to want to go ahead and pull that one. Come around here and I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and..
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turn the car over a few times and just let the thing die
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there we go. That's all you got to do. All right so it killed it. So now we're on the step two
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This air duct also attaches to the ICV, the auto control valve right here
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And next we're going to go ahead and remove the throttle body
4:49
The throttle body is just four 10 millimeter sockets. And this aluminum, these aluminum bolts get old over time
5:01
So you want to be careful when you retighten these not to over tighten
5:14
Remember, it does have this other hose as well. You have one, two, you have three, uh, three nuts on it
5:23
And you have this really long bolt right. here which is which they're all 11 millimeters
5:29
So you have a hose millimeter. So you have a hose in the back
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See you have a hose in the back of here as well that you need to pop off
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And you have a breather hose right here as well that goes under the upper intake
6:11
And underneath here you have the ICV valve right here and the PCV valve right here
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here. Everything here needs to be removed to get down to the squid right here, which is probably
6:27
the hardest part of this job. Yeah, I'd say that's, this is the single thing that makes this
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job a really, really long process. So you've also got to remove your fuel rail to remove your lower
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intake manifold. You've got two bolts here and there. On the above 10 millimeter. And there, and
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And you've got your fuel line here and here, the two fuel lines
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You just have to unscrew these hoses. Now I going to try and keep the ICV attached to this little branch here that sends air to the different fuel that sends to the air to the fuel injectors
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I'm going to keep that attached because these hoses are all brand new and I don't really want to fiddle with them
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But if you're just doing this for the first time, I would advise taking this whole thing apart
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cleaning out your ICV and your PCV valve because I'm sure it's met dirty
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and these hoses right here are probably trash on your car at this point
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They're probably cracked and everything, so I'd replace those two. So when I do this job, I do myself a favor, and I remove the alternator
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because it's pretty easy to remove, and it gives me a ton of space under the intake
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to actually reach the starter wires. Without it, I can be fiddling around for an hour or longer, trying to get off those starter wires
7:56
Once this alternator is out of the way, it takes me like five minutes to get off those starter wire nuts
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So I go and remove the alternator. It's not hard to do
8:07
You just get a 16mm socket on the bolt right here for the tensioner
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Untension the Servant Team Belt and get that off. Then you have to remove this pulley right here because removing the bolt for the alternator is in the way
8:24
Once you remove this pulley, you can go remove the top. bolt here and the bottom bolt down here. Once you do that, you're probably going to have to
8:36
give it some leverage to force it out. I like to just use like a small crowbar and ply it in
8:44
between here. That works really well. Just dig it out. Then once you do that, it's got wires
8:50
on the back that you need to unplug, or nuts that you need to loosen, which, which
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also run back to the squid right here. So it's good you can go and get that out of the way as well
9:03
Hey viewers, just want to show y'all the hardest part about putting back the squid
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the electrical squid, is the starter wires, at least in my opinion they are
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So they're hard to, it's difficult to get them mixed up and blow your starter
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because they're all different nut sizes. The wires are all different sizes
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So the top one to the left, the smaller top one on the starter solenoid, is a 8mm, but I didn't have any 8 millimeters hanging around, so all I have is 516th, which works fine
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The top one that's attached to the battery, where the battery actually hooks up to is a 13 millimeter and comes with a little washer
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and then the one at the bottom is a 10 millimeter and it's copper, copper colored
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So just hopefully that helps you out a bit when you're doing this
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All right, so once you've got the lower intake off and the squid and everything out
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and I just push it to the side, what you're going to want to go ahead and do is you're going to want to go ahead and stuff some paper towels into each cylinder right here
10:20
That's just to keep crap from getting in there while you're working on the car
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So here's the fuel rail that I've removed. You can see the different fuel injectors here
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This one's really clean and you've got a fouled one at one or two
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You can really tell the condition of these until you actually pulled it off and taken a look at it There two bolts There one 16 at the top
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You just got to hold it from the other side. It's a torx bit on the
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transmission side. You got to hold that while you're turning it or it'll just keep spinning
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So at this point we got the starter out and I tell you, you know, one
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Once you got everything off, it's definitely the easier part is getting the starter out
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Once you got everything out. And here's the old one. You can see where the wire harness that goes through the intake manifold connects to the starter
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It connects to it on the starter solenoid in three different places, actually
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It connects to it on the bottom two, the small two bolts
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and then on the bigger one right here, right here, where I'm moving up
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Let me see. And that was definitely, that was probably the hardest part of this whole job
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was removing that wire harness, getting everything removed. And make sure when you're doing this to, I taped up
11:58
I taped up all my wires, just so once I put it back together
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I'll know exactly where it goes. I've placed the new starter on
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I got the first bolt, the top bolt on right there, right here
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I got that onto the bell housing and got that tightened. I'm using a 16 on the motor side
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And then I had to use an E14 inverted torques on the transmission side to keep the bolt in place
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The other thing is when you're reassembling this, obviously you have to put on the lower intake manifold first
12:35
but when you put it on, don't actually bolt it up or anything
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Just set it there and just really loose fit it. That way you can wriggle it around a bit when you're trying to put back in your squid
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And don't forget that the breather hoses that run to the lower intake manifold at the very bottom
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of it need to be reattached before you start messing with the upper intake and everything
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So I'm going to go ahead and rewire all these wires on the squid
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That is why of course, and what really helps here is that you got everything labeled
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You don't necessarily have to, but I like to. Obviously on this squid, these top wires right here, if you can't remember, they all go above
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The two groups of wires at the bottom go below the lower intake
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And you basically just have to hook everything up through the intake
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It's really tight quarters, but it's definitely possible to do it. So at this point, I've got the car back together, and as you can see, I've started it
13:43
up and it's running real nice. Now, when you put back together the whole intake manifold like this, and after taking it
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apart, it might not start immediately. The fuel has to be repressurized as well
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So what you do is you turn the key two clicks and hold it there for about 15
14:03
seconds. Then afterwards you just try it once or twice and if it starts running then there's no problem. If not, wait around for a few minutes and then restart it again
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