HELP E36 ABS/ASC/ECU

[spikeymikey12000]

Hoping somebody can help.

Took a risk and bought a 98 E36 328i with no MOT with the ABS/ASC light on. The car is on a friends driveway and drives great. Have had a mobile mechanic out today who has tried 6 different readers and managed to get the OBD port to talk to the laptop but couldn't get anything from the ECU.

Everything else on the car works just as it should so the ECU is obviously working fine.

Any ideas? It's driving me mad and I don't really want to start replacing sensors and ABS modules etc blindly.

Cheers

[E-bmw]

These cars don't have true OBD so a lot of readers won't connect to many of the systems.

If you connect your reader & go to live data you should still be able to see/read the speed data from the sensors & go out for a drive, you will almost certainly see one reading different/zero.

Check all tyre pressures & sizes to make sure they are all the same.

Much of the time with these cars it is just one of the ABS sensors.

[Elliot2000]

They have they round data connections under the bonnet to carry out diagnostic

[E-bmw]

They do, but it is not completely compatible with all of the OBD standard so not every ecu is accessible using OBD readers.

[4rephill]

E-bmw said:

These cars don't have true OBD so a lot of readers won't connect to many of the systems.

If you connect your reader & go to live data you should still be able to see/read the speed data from the sensors & go out for a drive, you will almost certainly see one reading different/zero.

Check all tyre pressures & sizes to make sure they are all the same.....

Test driving a car with no MOT might not be the smartest idea!

E-bmw said:

.......Much of the time with these cars it is just one of the ABS sensors.

Already told the OP that 9 days ago here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

OP: Get the car to a BMW specialist and they should easily be able to tell if you have an ABS/wheel speed sensor failure or an ABS/ASC+T unit failure.

My previous car was a '97 328i Sport that I owned for @ 8 years. In that time I had three ABS/wheel speed sensors fail, all of which were found easily by my local BMW dealership (an independent BMW specialist should be able to spot a failed sensor just as easily).

I had one failure that BMW found to be due to a faulty ABS/ASC+T control unit. I wasn't prepared to pay the cost of fitting a new control unit, so I found a second hand unit for sale on Ebay and fitted it myself (a piece of pss to do - All the instructions are available via a quick Google search)

[spikeymikey12000]

Thanks for that everyone. My main concern is that the guy who saw the car today seems to think it has an electrical problem as below:

Hi mike my dignostics connected to the car ecu's but it wouldn't read them when I connected my Delphi system I was struggling to maintain a constant 12v feed.

There was more than enough power to start the car without any problem which would make me believe that could also be a wiring problem with the car on the ecu That could also be the cause of the problem.

I have checked with the manufactures of the main system that I use and it should have read the cars ecu's with no problem.

unfortunately iam unable to to fault find this type of fault there may be a possibility that an auto electrician may have come across the same problem in the past on a bmw and be able to shed more light on it.