1982 320i Overheating at an idle

[Andrew Crawford]

HI,

I have a 1982 320i that overheats at an idle. Ive changed the t-stat, radiator
cap and flushed out the engine. The radiator seems look fine. The O2 sensor
light is on. i changed that and that light is still on. The car seems to be
idleing really rough also... between 600-1100 rpms. Any ideas of were to with
this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
andy

--
Andrew Crawford

[Rick]

Every 30k miles or so, a switch is toggled by your speedometer that causes a
small fuse to blow, blowing that fuse cause the 02 lamp to come on. You
must remove the instrument cluster and replace the fuse to turn the light
off. Of course you could always just unplug the lamp.

Rough idle is hard to diagnose without more information. But since your
overheating... well, does it only idle rough? Or does it act strange when
driving also? Maybe overheating is blown head gasket, water jacket to
cylinder, smell the exhaust, is it sweet like antifreeze? Blown head gasket
could also leak water into the oil, does you oil look like chocolate milk?

Rick
<snip>

[JBur955195]

Rick:

Might check out your fan clutch!! Could be causing your over heating
problems!! Especially!1 if you located in a warm climate!! Take Care! Jay

[KMG12429]

I can help you wit the O2 "idiot light".

Follow your speedometer cable from the transmission towards the firewall.
About in the middle of the cable near the left front tire is a black box. On
the rear of the box is a button. Push the button in with a pencil or
screwdriver. The O2 light comes on at milage intervals and is for you to check
the O2 sensor, not to replace it.

PS. My 1980 320i has always read hot if it idles for a while. Does your
electric cooling fan come on??

[JPp6708]

Hi,
You might check into a possible head gasket or try bleeding the cooling system
since the system can get air bound and wont circulate properly. This system is
meant to be air free and there should be a bleeder screw on the thermostat
housing or in that area.
Jim

[VAStewart1]

I don't know about the overheating but the oxygen sensor light will only go out
when you hit the reset button on the service interval switch.

[<C64>]

On 8 Jan 1999 15:30:58 GMT, an...@cvc.mfg.sgi.com (Andrew Crawford)
wrote:

Hallo there,

Well from my experience with a similar problem I found it to
be that my walls between my valves has small cracks that let the water
leak thru when it got hot, in turn burning up the water and then the
engine got hot, with a wobbley idle to boot. Not saying it's your
problem but might want to check if your water levels staying steady.
If so might think of cleaning out the radiator real good to open up
maybe some plugged pathways and then refill. Oh one other thing I ran
into was that my water pump was going bad and in turn it wasn't
passing the water thru the engine correctly causing it to get hot at
idle or "ack" standing in a drive-thru line (hee hee), but being that
water pumps are cheap now days might check it... I was informed a good
method for checking the bearings in a water pump was to remove the
belt, (hopefully its a good working one) and then see if you can move
the axel that's attached to the pully wheel any..movement should be
noticable. If so might need to change it!

Well hope this all helps someone out there =]

goo...@ao.net

[rhau...@gmail.com]

Hi Jim,
Where is the bleeder screw on the thermostat on a 1982 bmw 320i?

Thx