Check engine light 1995 525i

Hello everyone. I know this could be several things, however just wanted to post to the group to see what they would do, or better yet what I should did.

I have a 1995 525i with 102,000 miles. On my way to work, my check engine light came on. About two minutes later, it went our and stayed out. Not I¹m looking down every 20 sec to see if it came back on. Any ideas?

Also a problem I have had for about a year now, is the temp gage. It¹s not on the bottom of the meter, but at the top of the blue box on the bottom of the meter. Driving around town it really doesn¹t move up. However when I I¹m on the interstate, it moves to normal 12 o¹clock. Even on cold days, the needle is on the blue box, but the heater is blowing very hot air. Do I just need to replace the temp gauge located on the side of the radiator? Or is my engine cooking?

Anyway, thanks for any input you might have.

Have a great day!

Cheers, David

These two things may actually not be related. You should extract the codes from the ECU, but I'll bet you will find that you are getting a lambda error from the O2 sensor. It's pretty common to see them go at about 100k miles +/- and when they do first start to go they are sometimes "out of range" just when first "coming online" which is after about 3 minutes running time from a cold start.

You have an OBD1 car by the way, so you can do the "stomp test" to extract the codes.

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I can't figure out what you are trying to say about the coolant temperature but the most likely thing is a bad thermostat. They are cheap and made to be replaced on a regular basis. If you have not replaced it in the course of troubleshooting this problem yet, do so.