General questions

[smdimjesus]

Howdy yall, first post on here longtime lurker, these forums have proven super useful to me, so thanks again and in advance. I got my 06 about a year ago and have put almost 50k miles on it bringing it to 150. 0 complaints at all the car had driven like a dream and I’ve put it through a really rough Colorado winter. I have some questions, nothing to crazy but I just want to get a realistic idea moving forward. I was driving to work a month ago and the car started dying and coming back to life, didn’t know what happened but it died, went to jump it and found my jack connected to my positive post of the battery. Would that cause any major issues? Around the same time as that my parking sensors have stopped working so I think that is one thing. Other than that should I check anything else? I want to put some money back into the car, I’ve taken care of a few minor repairs, nothing major. I got new belts and a new valve gasket, brakes and rotors, o2 sensor, and other minor things. I’ve started to restore the interior best I can as it is thrashed. A list of things wrong in the interior would be; rear pull handle snapped off, every door panel cracked and broken at the lower torx screw, adjustable steering wheel leather cover connectors broken, cargo light need as new connector, some tint is messed up and there are some knicks on the ceiling. As far as mechanically and electronically I don’t think to many things have gone bad. The list would be: dash doesn’t display the oil level, runs out of gas displayed at a qtr tank,

[wpoll]

Originally Posted by smdimjesus

... found my jack connected to my positive post of the battery. Would that cause any major issues?

Welding....

[smdimjesus]

Originally Posted by wpoll

Welding....

100%... I was stunned, I had to tug the jack a good bit to disconnect it, learned my lesson.

[wpoll]

Originally Posted by smdimjesus

100%... I was stunned, I had to tug the jack a good bit to disconnect it, learned my lesson.

Scary... guessing it was this fuse panel?



There should be a cover on this to prevent such welding!

Worst that would happen (short of a fire that destroys the car! ) is a cooked the battery.

[wpoll]

Originally Posted by smdimjesus

... runs out of gas displayed at a qtr tank,

And this is a failed (leaking) siphon pump - search for AWR-fix on siphon pump.

[andrewwynn]

A new o-ring and a plastic zip tie also a bit of Teflon tape will resolve the out of gas at ¹/₄ tank.

Advanced search andrewwynn user and topic awr-fix to find the thread.

It's a design flaw that allows the joint to flex until the o-ring pops out the side. Every e53 will do this given enough time. Both of ours did like clockwork at about 130,000 miles.

If you always full up early it will mask the issue and you'll find out the hard way that one time you need to use more range and most likely not near home.

[smdimjesus]

Originally Posted by andrewwynn

A new o-ring and a plastic zip tie also a bit of Teflon tape will resolve the out of gas at ¹/₄ tank.

Advanced search andrewwynn user and topic awr-fix to find the thread.

It's a design flaw that allows the joint to flex until the o-ring pops out the side. Every e53 will do this given enough time. Both of ours did like clockwork at about 130,000 miles.

If you always full up early it will mask the issue and you'll find out the hard way that one time you need to use more range and most likely not near home.

Right on, seems like an easy enough fix. Is there anywhere I can easily score things like O-Rings? Seems hard to come about specific pieces in-store.

[smdimjesus]

Originally Posted by wpoll

Scary... guessing it was this fuse panel?



There should be a cover on this to prevent such welding!

Worst that would happen (short of a fire that destroys the car! ) is a cooked the battery.

Yep that was the fuse panel, the plastic guard is broken off.. Cooked battery for sure. I thought it could have damaged the electronics but I don’t think it did. The parking sensors might have stopped working around the same time purely coincidentally.

[smdimjesus]

Gah, my post cut off early. Some more issues include aggressive idiling, sometimes turning gets loud, I believe I have a bit of a leak from the radiator, at start sometimes I get crazy noises. I want to know how to figure out what’s going wrong if anything major. I’m interested in replacing things, but I’d like to know which things I can take out and clean, or inspect to improve overall performance.

[andrewwynn]

Originally Posted by smdimjesus

Right on, seems like an easy enough fix. Is there anywhere I can easily score things like O-Rings? Seems hard to come about specific pieces in-store.

I think somebody measured the o-ring. I happened to have one on hand that fit from a flashlight.

Hardware stores will have a set of drawers with many o-rings in the plumbing Department. You can pull the "pear ring" out to Estimate the size. (you'll understand "pear" when you take it out.

If you caught it soon enough you don't even have to replace the o-ring just stuff it back in and put in the preventive zip tie that holds the joint from pushing apart.

The other joint is a plastic on plastic "seal" and is also destined to leak. On my first repair I cut an o-ring groove and added an o-ring, but on the second car I just wrapped the inner part with a few layers of *quality* Teflon tape making it 0.2mm bigger than the outer part for a tight fit.

That second joint is not meant to be serviceable and the official stance is to replace the entire jet pump gear once it fails to pump due to the inevitable failure. (it's held together in the middle and forced apart on the side). The fix is counter torque from the other side with a single nylon zip tie.