I wanted to take my e36 325i out for a day, the car started and drove fine as usual, got about 3 miles into my trip when it suddenly died and wouldn’t start again, just kept cranking. After checking over the car and trying to find an issue I could find nothing. Then a few hours later it started again but not for long, a couple more hours later she started again and managed to get it closer to home before it died again, waited again and got onto my driveway.
The gauge cluster shows the car is at normal temperature and wasn’t overheating, battery has good voltage, when the car dies it just goes down in revs till the engine is off, can anyone give ideas as to what could cause this?
Nobody has said it yet but I think this could be cam / crank position sensors. Had the same symptoms and it was that. Different car though.
Had this issue on my miata, the original sensor sometimes freaked out it got hot. Car died and wouldn’t start. Once it cooled down, worked again for a while until it got hot again. Not sure if this is a common issue here but might be the explanation.
I had an E36 325i with the M52 and found it was my crank angle sensor. From experience the cheap crank and cam angle sensors are unreliable and to prevent future issues its worth buying oem or a high quality replacment.