Plugs and coils 155467 - A little hesitation can ruin the fun.

  Poor Helena is having trouble accelerating. She's got cold feet for some reason. When I got the car originally there was a misfire situation on coil #5. You can see those two coils at the end are not Bosch units.

  I'm not having a misfire as much as terrible hesitation. Many forum posts about the same issue, many different ways to resolve it. Given this was a problem area before I'm starting here. Fresh plugs, gently used boots and coils.

  There are so many how-to's do this its ridiculous. Good one here: http://www.pelicanparts.com/bmw/techarticles/E36-Spark-Plugs/E36-Spark-Plugs.htm

New stuff going in.

Old stuff out.

Old plugs were Bosch super pluses, new ones are tried and true BKR6EQUP NGK Rs.

  All be it a bit blackened they don't look terrible. Poor spark plug hole #3 was filled with oil. The valve cover was not tightened properly before. I found the bolts beside the coil packs quite loose. Tightened that up. Will see if it makes any difference.

  Spark plug boots have seen their fair share of wear. Say that three times fast. New used ones going in. Bremi replacements.

  Coil Pack #2 shattered as I tried removing the plug boot. Looks a little well for wear. Replaced with a Bosch original. Got the other two non Bosch coils off of there as well

I got it all put back together proper and guess what? The car still has terrible hesitation. Boo. So I moved on to the intake side of things. While the engine was still running I messed around with the intake boot behind the Mass Airflow Sensor. The 45' boot that connects to the ASC tends to develope cracks and such. 

While digging around and moving it I found a hose that attaches to the bottom of the 45' intake boot. It had duct tape on one end and a non oem hose clamp on it. Suspect.

 I followed that up to the manifold where it was attached. While moving this hose the engine died. Interesting? To pull the hose closer to investigate. I pulled it gently mind you, it came right off. 

Jeremy tells me this is very normal. So we made a plan, I got him to diagnose it further just to make sure I wasn't off my rocker. We put together a list of preferred replacement items and ordered them.

In our quest for betterment, we decided upon an ASC delete as well. For those not in the know the ASC device on the E36 is a primitive way of traction control. If the car senses wheel slippage it cuts the power to the engine with the ASC which looks like a throttle body. The ASC plate closes, restricting air, independent of the throttle body in these situations.

The downside of that is when you do have slippage of the tires while accelerating the car will fall on its face. Not exactly the way of the performance enthusiast but, fine for normal driving situations, I guess. Either way I'll be running an "ACS delete" for the foreseeable future. 

More to come on this when the parts come in.