How to Overhaul E36 M3 Cooling System - Radiator, Water Pump, Hoses, SPAL Fan

all right e36 fans uh ed's back we're gonna really dig into e36 this is the this is the these are the things that need to be done in order to make the car work unquestionably correct to make it we'll call it og spec uh so today's video is going to be we can i'm going to call this how to which i usually don't do i normally call it how i how many of these have you done oh yeah i mean i've done so many it's just i can almost do it with my eyes closed this is what this is what you need to do this on one of these cars why do we need to do this man it's just a lot of the plastic things with the heat they just tend to crack and when something cracks and you do not pay attention to that gauge now you just uh technically do a head gasket or even worse warp ahead because nowadays to get ahead even used it's they're very hard so you want to be able to put the time and effort at the front end instead of at the back end so we're going to be doing cooling that's what this video is of course as you see from the title we're going to be doing power steering you'll be doing a rack docker searing rack which is in transit hopefully we'll get here soon we're going to be doing headlights intake throttle body and a bunch of other stuff diff trans short shifter all these different things are going to be various videos but today's video is going to be how we do the cooling system upgrade and we'll go through all the different products we'll have links and descriptions where you get all this stuff michael alba has a whole spreadsheet of all these all these items that we had to buy where it makes sense to buy oem versus say oem whatever you call it yeah an aftermarket you know replacements here beefier so um so let's roll okay well i'm going to follow eb around he's going to do his thing all right uh so one thing that i i'm not used to seeing these on the e36s that i've been working on is the actual shield underneath this is pretty much brand new um so we're gonna take this down so we can get to the drain plug and then we'll drink uh drain the coolant out so because of the beautiful floors that we have here um we're going to put a little bit of cardboard down once we get to removing the housing because that the thermostat housing there's going to be a lot of coolant that comes out through that we got the drain plug here plastic so you you know be careful it doesn't take a lot of a lot to tighten it what i did forget to do is remove the cap up top from the uh from the surge tank so uh this is gonna dribble a little bit all right so just gonna put the drain back in that's enough coolant to get it out so i'm just gonna hand tighten it in place and call it a day so now underneath here pretty much as of right now that's all i'm going to have to end up doing so lower the car down and start taking the intake box out and removing that beautiful clutch fan and mousing along all right going to take the intake off just going to clean up some area i'm going to take the the vent for the alternator off and then the next step is the part that i love the most righty tighty lefty loosey not on this one so we're gonna take the uh fan clutch off all right so righty tighty lefty loosey see i'm not the only one i'm not the only one who has to think about it sometimes right everybody has to do this well on this one you got to because you have to do the opposite so you don't want to get it even tighter i need a bigger screwdriver here so what i'm doing is i'm using the the screwdriver to pry it because i don't have a tool for it so that she doesn't spin all right so i'm going to leave that in there and i will remove the hose from the top because it will not hold any more coolant or it doesn't shouldn't and just in case if it does i don't want to make a mess and be that guy let's have em over no no no no no he made a mess last time well i mean i don't mind a mess it's just that they're not good it's just that it's cool and gets on the floor and it's slippery forever yes so uh one thing that uh we'll be replacing as well while we're here will be the uh the thermostat housing the infamous plastic one um on the newer s52s uh they end up cracking so we'll be replacing it with a nice solid aluminum one and our beautiful little clips here let me grab the smaller one all right so this one i i am going to lose a lot of coolant because it's the back coolant hose so yeah there we go there we go i guess a little rags or shop towels should i just do it like a band-aid and just pull it and let it go so you could uh no do it slow and controlled there we go man look at this brand new oil pan gosh i'm mesmerized okay so uh this is the hose that connects uh to the metal pipe that goes on the back of the water pump back to the back that attaches to the heater core or the heater valves this tube or this pipe here is the one that connects to your search tank on the passenger side so it's just a hose clamp and just take it off slowly so this plastic piece right here there's got a little bit of a nipple on it and you got to pull up towards the sky and then you could slide the black plastic piece out so it's kind of like a reusable zip tie so it makes it so much easier with the headlight gone but this is the clip we gotta disconnect and uh the clip or the plug the clip is underneath which is between the hose clamp itself and and there she goes that's it now she'll come out one whole entire piece oh i have one more clamp i'll be darned okay and there she is so uh there you go um that's it it access access is just a lot of the motor so as you can tell when it's black this is the plastic one they are prone to crack with the heat so if you ever get a chance you replace it with the uh the aluminum one and now here comes a little bit more of a coolant mess so we're going to go ahead and remove the thermostat housing put the new thermostat in and uh put the new piece in and then that there will be done what we're going to do is all all of what's up front here on the engine is going to get completely refreshed so we're going to install new pulleys your water pump uh thermostat housing your belts just anything that will technically uh will be considered a maintenance item down the road or can technically go wrong we're doing everything up front so that way all there is to do is just drive the car and enjoy it so let's get cracking so i've got to take the cap off of the adjuster to be able to put uh torx oh allen head on this one and be able to remove the tension so i could remove the the belt and the same thing with with this one for the ac i'm so used to not having ac ac pulleys on my cars there we go one belt down and there we go that was quick go ahead and replace this one real quick so now it comes to messy part map [Music] so now um just removing everything that's going to be replaced so next thing i'm going to drop the water pump and then the thermostat housing uh that's a first normally i get a stud that comes out with it but um i don't think these are going to be long enough the water pumps come with a a threaded slot here on on each end and you're supposed to put one of the bolts through it that's long enough and what it does it pulls the uh the water pump out these are the bolts for the pulley but they're just not going to be long enough i could get it to come out a little bit but it won't come out all the way but let's give it a whirl so when you do do this don't do it with an electric one just to run it just run it in oh look like it's already starting to come out i like to do it by hand you want to draw them out pretty much about the same oh man look at that you had this all along man all right now i'm bottomed out so let's see if i can get the rest of it out this way [Applause] many sleepless nights on this one huh if we went ahead that bucket now don't forget to take the screws back out otherwise you're going to be looking for them if you end up tossing it before you're all done plastic but say goodbye so what we're going to do is we're going to take the tensioners knock them out while we're in here i will do this one here and the ac one as well just because we're in here okay so when you replace your pulleys um you're gonna have this uh dust cover in the back make sure you replace it it goes right back there okay so um there is one pulley that uh we did not get uh which will we we will replace a little bit later um but we did wouldn't get it i went ahead and got the tensioner for so i'm gonna go ahead and swap that old tensioner out for the new one and then work my way to the water pump and the thermostat house so what we got here is a stuart racing water pump and the housing itself as you can see compared to the original one which i already tossed it doesn't have this whole housing it sits in the actual in the engine so it doesn't cavitate so it flows better and it's also a nice metal thick metal uh impeller so i've run two of these on my race cars and yet to have any issues so just because it's it's a little slick i'm gonna go ahead and throw a little bit normally i use oil but it's not going to work too well there so when you get this in and you're only going to be able to get a couple of the threads on there so you want to do it by hand so just grab a wrench and i'll start from this one over here and you just got to barely turn it the o-ring itself is what you're fighting against and just do it little by little until you have more threads than a quarter of a thread and now she's starting to ring in and what you can end up doing is you could look at the ones that don't have a nut on them you can tell that they're they're coming in so i'll go ahead and put this one on and i'll just tighten this one a little bit more and then this one now i got to get this one down here in the bottom and now you want to do just like uh the merry-go-round go all the way around little by little now you want to make sure you take your time on this don't just rush it in there from one side to the other the o-ring is the only thing that's going to seal it and you don't want to go back in here and redo it all again because the o-ring so there we go now they're all snug now i could just tighten it now whenever i can i always try to do um crossways just to put it make sure it sits in there tight now with my built-in torque wrench here um this is very small i know some some people out there always love to go and torque everything and to be honest with you small stuff like this now small stuff like this i don't worry about i've been doing this so long that i kind of have a general idea of what tight is i mean so that's tight she's good she's not going anywhere so now it's thermostat all right so i already went ahead and cleaned the surface off uh on the thermostat so we're just gonna go ahead and throw the uh the new thermostat in i got the o-ring in place there all right so here's the uh the o-ring uh that comes with it you know brand new not plastic so uh very easy so i normally end up grabbing this so i end up using the the upper bolt here i'm sorry down here in the bottom so i could get it in place because it's easier to get to and see you just got to be careful with the o-ring got to keep your eye on it and what i use this boat here is just to bring it down so that way the o-rings and the thermostats stay in place now to help me as i got my finger i don't know if you can see it i got my finger down here which is leaning which this is resting on and it's on and i'm kind of pressing up on it on the actual cylinder head part that way it doesn't move and now i wish i had my my wrench so i'm just moving it around make sure everything is good and i also take a peek just in case it wouldn't sit there very well if the o-ring popped out but she's in place so everything i'm trying to do is just by hand all right so now we're just gonna we're gonna torque her down so the long bolt go towards the bottom make sure that's i'm sorry the long one goes up top holy moly short one on the bottom all right so uh i'm gonna finalize the front here gonna put the pulley on and now it does go one way uh the holes are at set at a certain pattern so i wouldn't say it goes well it goes two ways the bolts won't line up if you try to do it the other way yeah baby all right so we're gonna we're gonna drop in the uh the radiator and uh get the hoses in place and uh technically finalize this area here and what we'll do is we'll worry about uh um wiring up the uh the fan the electric fan and get that going and because we still have some coolant hoses we need to replace underneath the throttle body all right so here we go uh we've got the um the fan here and with the nice radiator and the surge tank so what we've got is the new coolant level sensor that we're going to be installing um it came with the uh the drain uh for the radiator and this is the little nipple that goes on the search tank here for a drain tube and the radiator cap and then we also have the kit for the fan relay or the kit for the the fan itself the install kit makes it so much more easier and then we have the pigtail for the for the fan itself so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to assemble everything so i have to take the search tank off to be able to get this puppy on and um next time you see it she'll be all assembled all right guys so she's all assembled uh got the hose in i got the sensor in place and clocked so that the sensor plug will be easy to install um on this end right here i got the the mounts the rubber mounts for the radiator uh the cap on and the new hose going all the way across to the upper nipple up there the new drain plug which is going to be a very easy one you never have to worry about over tightening this one um unpair uh unlike the uh the oem ones so she looks great uh here's a hose don't think it's just anything so um so yeah and uh she looks beautiful so let's throw her in all right so uh was just about to put the radiator in and then realized we left this sucker off now you got to be careful there is a nipple that uh that the uh the pulley sits in there please make sure that you put it in that little slot right there so so the belt i've done a lot of these so it's kind of easy the way it goes the easiest thing to do is you have to put it on the harmonic balance pulley first or you have to get it on that one and now what you do is you leave the power steering one last and i already put the cap on got ahead of myself all right so as you can see it goes from the water pump underneath this pulley to the alternator and then it'll go to the power steering pump and then from here it comes on the other side the back side of the water pump goes to this pulley and goes around it and then around the harmonic balance oh shoot going the wrong way with it i forgot my righty tighty lefty loosey thing i just gotta slowly just compress it and there she goes now when you end up doing it just go around make sure that the belt is sitting in the pulleys you don't want to rip up a new belt and everything looks good so now time for the ac one as you can tell i struggled a little bit on that one and uh that shows you i rarely deal with ac why because i'm usually working on race cars no i gotta have ac in the car that's one thing about new pieces you want to be so careful with them because they're so new so these clips we have new ones so they're gonna come out and it just pops right into place underneath the lip there we go that's one clip there we go hey if anybody's uh want some use parts i think the car came with 36 thousand miles on it uh ask in the comments and uh i'm sure i'm sure matt will let him go he's uh he's not keen to keeping those around so and that's it i mean they really go in simple and easy it's underneath that lip and you're done and that's it so now we just bring it in if i could get it in the center here we go she looks great that's good so i'm going to leave these hoses off for right now and what i'm going to do i am going to now start disassembling the uh the throttle body and getting to this area removing a strut tower so that i could start replacing these hoses right here so i'll move this one out of the way um so yeah let's uh let's get going with that all right so just moving those over to the side you got the evap plugged down here and uh yeah this is for the uh try to control ace asc we're gonna replace the throttle body while i'm here right yeah all right so since uh i have to remove it um what we're gonna do is we're gonna install the new dining one as the same time that i replaced the the coolant hoses down here so we'll do knock those two at the same time okay so what we're doing is going above and beyond uh what with some of these items one of the things is you know these are the o-rings for the metal cooling pipe that goes on the back side of the water pump housing they do leak so we want to replace that and since we are already replacing the throttle body is we need to remove the intake to be able to get to a couple other hoses that we decided while we're there to go ahead and replace so we're gonna go ahead and do that um and uh yeah it's just um it's just more time um but for your the way you got to think about it is you're you're almost in there why not spend the extra dollar on a hose 25 cents per o-ring 35 cents per o-ring and just just do it i mean it's uh you're already there you're already doing it so let's uh keep plugging it along so the next thing is i'm taking the intake manifold off and then we'll start replacing some more stuff well we should be doing is while we're here replacing this particular intake manifold with an m50 i'm just messing with you matt a little bit of a mess a nice little fancy strap that we've got there no need to take it all completely out out of the slots underneath i tell you what it's been a while since i've messed with this much oem stuff so here's the uh the two lines that will be replaced this one here this one as well and then like we stated we got the two o-rings on the metal hard line that's right here so we got some more removing to do to be able to get to that point all right so uh we there's a lot that had to be removed to get to where we're at just to replace these two o-rings right here which already removed and uh it was uh the whole harness had to be uh loosened uh from this brackets and uh moved out of the way to be able to get this uh this uh metal tube out of the way and of course disconnect it from its hose back here um because the hose back here on the back side of the uh of the head of the cylinder head that's what we're gonna going to replace as well so we're gonna go ahead and replace that which connects to the heater heater control valves right there so it's uh it's a lot and uh the step-by-step procedure probably probably missed a couple steps but in the interim um it's just a lot and once you take the intake manifold off um it's it's just a mess there's a couple pieces on the bottom of the intake manifold like this vacuum line and a couple of the connectors that they're just stuffed in there that you once you go to take it out you'll technically see that something is uh holding you up so um just a piece of advice if you do end up doing it just be gentle don't pull on it um you know it should come out easily and as you can see we didn't want to take the uh it didn't have the tool to take the fuel lines off so that's why we're working with the way it is now because i we don't have the tool for it so um so yeah so we're gonna replace the parts and um hopefully slap the sucker back together because of how much more area or how much room we have here we're going to go ahead and do another thing which is replace the power steering reservoir and get to some of the some of the lines while we're here just to make it so much more easier so it turned out to concentrating on one job and ended up doing all of them at the same time i already knew it was going to happen it was just a matter of uh getting to it so here we are let's just keep plugging away all right so uh what we've got is we got all our hoses and everything that we had uh ordered that while we were here we decided to go ahead and pull the trigger and just get it done so we have the oil separator now we got the uh vacuum line that goes from the oil separator down to the dipstick and the remaining heater hoses and um and yeah that should pretty much plug everything up so we're just going to go ahead and get started with that so the first thing i'll do is i'll grab the intake manifold and start installing the oil separator and work my way in here oil separator i mean really it's honestly you got three bolts and it just pops right on off you got the new seal that goes in place and it's really honestly very easy to to to change out and then we also end up getting the new hose so we were fighting we went ahead and got the screws but because the car was dried ice i mean it really kept the zinc look so we're gonna put the uh the ones that we took off i'm gonna put them back on just to keep uh keep the look going so all right new new gaskets now you got to make sure that you go in because these do have little um i want to call them little nipples that hold them in place so when you put the uh the manifold back on they will not fall off kind of like the m50 intakes okay so what we're going through now is kind of putting everything in place on how it's going to go just loosely so that we make sure we have everything connected uh you know we have the tps here and then the actual um ac t acr [Music] what's that asc we have that here so we got our our purge valve here connected and then we have our map sensor so all these are here are connected and making sure that it's going to be routed correctly because we still have the hose to put here and then the other hose that i got right here um and then of course we've got our solenoid valve here and uh so we have this little empty uh bad boy here we're trying to figure out where it goes at this point and um it's a good thing to try to to locate everything before you put everything down and tighten everything down like we don't even have the manifold tightened down yet everything's still loose because just in case we got to take it back off for something that's a little hard to put back together so that's where we're at now we did get everything now uh situated where it connected so the one wire that we were looking for the one plug that's where it went right there it um i was looking for a pigtail um didn't think it was on the fuel rail like that but so we have that there and then we have the the solenoid uh so it gets bolted here and then we have that plug that goes there and uh everything here like we stated we've already got so now it everything looks good so what we're going to do is i'm going to take one more glance at everything to make sure it is going in the right spot and it's not rubbing in anything and then i'm going to drop the intake manifold and start securing everything down so excited excited it's coming together exactly okay so we got the brackets the intake secured we got the injectors the injector rails you got all the connections here um the little lines underneath here uh the most painted about one which i was afraid of when i was taking it off and it came true when i was putting it back on is the bolt that holds the fuel lines underneath the intake manifold um i was thinking it was straight through it was at an angle but finally got uh got that in place and the only thing that is technically left right now are the two coolant hoses which we will uh get those attached when we finalize the cooling system because we're going to be installing the diamond throttle body okay so now that we got pretty much the uh throttle body everything in place we have everything connected down here that we need to uh we're gonna go ahead and finish up the the coolant so we're gonna go ahead and add the radiator hoses and then what i'm going to end up doing is um we're also going to hook up the power for the coolant fan and get that sorted out as well and then once we get all that uh tidied up we'll go ahead and pull the the coolant system down in the vacuum um that's in a good way to check for uh for leaks as well and that way we get all the air out of the engine and there is no air pockets whatsoever so it should be smooth sailing no no need to be burping it down the road so we'll keep going with that so here is our fuse and we are going to put in a 30 or 40. so as we stated this is going to be the power coming in all right so this is going to be connecting to my yellow source on the relay it actually is labeled that says 12 volt battery so that was going to go over here and just put it this way so i don't want to mess up with the paint so then we have our red wire from the relay and that one is it's written on there goes to the fan and of course we have our fan here that's already connected so we'll connect that there here's my ground and then here is the sensor wire um which is number zero number zero is ground so i put it to ground because these two will be going to ground and then i have my number two green wire which is labeled here i don't know if you could end up getting it here number two and then that one is going to go to my gray wire here which is going to be this uh sensor signal and that's how we got it so we got it all tied together so the yellow wire is just going to go to uh power for the coil side of the relay so that way when everything gets triggered it'll switch over and i'm sorry orange wire i am sometimes uh colorblind um and uh so yeah so that's pretty much what we've got and we're going to start cutting some wires cutting them to uh to the correct length and start connecting them trying to get it to seal right all right so what i'm doing is just trying to make it a little bit cleaner on the way the directions of the current wires are going so there is a clip here with a uh with a nut and i'm going to go ahead and clip onto that so i will have my ground for the sensor and then the ground for the fan right there and then that way my wires will go that way and back up towards the front we got the wiring done on the electric fan so i just got my wires laying there already been uh heat shrinked and everything um got some wire loom we're going to be putting on there so we'll get that sorted out and the intake is all on and uh the only thing we got for the cooling system now is we're going to install the uh radiator hoses on the upper and lower and at that point that's when we could go ahead and pull it down on the vacuum and get all the air out of it and then install the coolant so all right guys so the hoses are in now and the next step is going to we're going to pull it down in the vacuum and we also just got to tidy up the wires here is my uh the vacuum system so i have the the um the rubber insert just goes into the cooling tank and this is pretty much what i end up using for all of them and it just for different sizes so just put it in there and tight uh get it nice and snug and uh and then that's where my my hose goes through and then uh i have my vacuum side where all the air comes out and then this is where it uh starts to take the coolant in she's pulling down really quick which is great so now we're here into the green about 27 28 right in there we're getting really close so usually i stop it right about there and then technically what i do is just kind of wait around and see if she drops and if she starts to drop that means we got a little bit of a leak so she's looking like she's holding very well normally literally within five to ten seconds you should be able to see it starting to uh to come down and it's not it's staying steady right there so i consider that a a win so what we're going to do is we're going to grab the coolant real quick and we're just going to let it uh set the coolant in okay so i got my uh containers of the antifreeze down below me and the biggest thing and this is where it's a good thing to use this is when you do it this way you take all the air out of the system so when you normally fill it up you have a chance of air pockets doing it this way there is no chance of air pockets it's going to suck nothing but uh coolant in so and um in all essence she should be ready to go once she's all topped off so this is the hose right here and there we go you got to keep an eye on the actual container and see where you're at on level wise so you do not run it empty and suck air in and as you see it suck in the uh the coolant you can see the the gauge starts to go up and that is uh fill in the void all right so um as you can see we are using the green coolant and the reason why we're using the green coolant is that's what was already originally in the car so instead of um filling it up with um green and blue we decided to go with what was in there so that's why we have green so you can see the gauge it's pretty much staying sturdy but then you'll see a the coolant will just start to fall back down into the uh into the canister all right so it made a lighter out of me but that's it she won't take no more okay so coolan is in um she's where she needs to be on the level on the search tank here and uh i got my cap on and that is it the only thing we need to end up doing is uh finalizing everything else so that we could run the engine and make sure everything is good as of right now like i stated before she held pressure so there is no leaks and that's that's the greatest part so on the coolant side that is completely done but then we have the electrical portion here for the electric fan and all i have to end up doing is just uh cleaning this up and putting it putting some wire loom in and then this will be done as well and um yeah we're going to take a few minutes to figure out the next item to work on so stay tuned just trying to finish off the uh the the wire so i've already started my wire loom and uh i got it here from the switch itself going down underneath here i've got the plug to the fan kind of zip tied in the way there i will get it more secure once the headlight is in because i don't want to secure it and have to take it apart just to put the headlight in and so i have my wires running up through here on the on the side here where some of these are already ran and this is all i got left and then the other section there and i already got the other relay which will go right here and then she's going to look pretty i would like to say as good as oem but i'll let you guys be the judge of that as of right now the coolant is completely done uh i tidied up the wiring harness um so everything is wire loomed and on this side you can look at it it really looks really nice so thumbs up and a pat on the back for me and so this is pretty much going to wrap up this whole thing we uh kind of started with a certain items that we were going to place so what we end up doing is we replaced all the idler pulleys that were in there we replaced the the belt thermostat thermostat housing we went and did the water pump and with that with the whole coolant we went into the coolant lines now this is where it got kind of tricky and we had to stop and order some more parts is while we were here there were so many hoses that we didn't take into consideration like the heater hoses that we decided to go ahead and order those so every coolant hose slash heater hose that is underneath the intake manifold was replaced so with all those heat heater hoses that we end up doing and then we also we replaced the radiator put a new aluminum radiator in all the hoses for that as well and we did an electric fan and with the electric fan as you can see the wiring that's what uh um so it could work off the coolant sensor that we have here on the side so that way when the temperature gets to a certain degree it's going to kick that fan on and so we did do other stuff and we will touch base on that on a different video because we were already here and might as well do it all at the same time so stay tuned for the whole installation of the throttle body the dining cold air intake and then also we did the power steering reservoir all the hoses and the racks so keep an eye for those [Music] you

Channel: Obsessed Garage

Views: 47,648

Keywords: matt moreman, obsessed garage, E36 M3, Cooling, System, How to, How to overhaul, How to diy, Fix cooling, Overheating, Water pump, Thermostat, Guide, Radiator, Wiring, Spal, Zionsville, OEM, Parts, Cooling overhaul, E36 cooling fix

Id: VW_uEfgvNaY

Length: 40min 21sec (2421 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021