Animal was living under hood--noob questions about reading the ETM

[ryan roopnarine]

Hello all, long time listener, first time caller...
07/1991 525i US/Canada

Anyhoo, my e34 has been parked up for a while (since about the end of 2009). At the time, I was able to start it and have it idle properly, no matter how long it sat. However, at the end of 2009, my sister began to place dishes of food under my car in an attempt to feed several stray cats that lived at my grandmother's house (my grandmother would not have allowed this if she knew, hence my sister placing the dishes under the car. Consequently, since the end of 2009, I have not been able to get the car to idle right, and I'm sure that 2+ cats have hung out there for extended periods of time. The black foam insulation around the ac lines, for example, is chewed up, and I've had to remove accumulated water/urine? from the spark plug wells. No big deal, as the car lives in Florida, and I have to remove water from those wells approximately once every six months. 50 or 60 q-tips and a bottle of crc contact cleaner later, they were dry and clean. The problem is that I can't get the damn thing to idle right since. The car initially threw a code for fuel injector 4, iirc, so i swapped that one, with no change. It was cold here during that period of time, but I don't think that the car was in such bad shape as to crack a headgasket from simply sitting there. I've done the following in an attempt to fix the situation:

all 6 FIs were cleaned off-car,
replaced the FP regulator
replaced all 6 of the coil on plug coils
replaced all 6 of the spark plugs
taken the fuel rail electrical supply off and made sure that the contacts were firmly pressed in on the injectors
taken voltage measurements on the injector terminals with the engine running (they are all seemingly responsive, but I was using a harbor freight VOM, so one of them may be screwing with me unbeknownst.
checked the key on voltage at each of the coil plugs
replaced the computer
made ground wires to daisy chain all of the coil packs together, and made sure that all of the grounds were augmented in the engine bay (this seemed to make an improvement, but didn't fix the situation)

perhaps the only two things I haven't done at this point are to check each plug for spark (kinda hard to do by myself with that long plug well--my harbor freight spark checker won't work for this, and to check the compression on the engine. My unkle the mechanic said that my particular car cuts fuel when it detects a problem with spark, so i guess i'll have to check spark at some point.
I also bought a bosch noid light, which i received recently in the mail.


Still here? thanks

What I am completely clueless about is reading the ETM. i see that it has designations for each of the terminals concerning everything electrical on the car, but have been unsuccessful in, say, finding the positive wire going to a fuel injector and then finding the corresponding pin in the connector to the computer. I would like to start with the most common sense approach to me, which would be to ohm out each wire going to FI components by placing one probe on, say, a Fuel injector terminal, and the other on the corresponding pin at the computer connector. I am having a little bit of difficulty in doing this because, like I said previously, I don't know how to find things in the ETM. I've had a ham radio license since I was 10 (mucho woman magnet, I know,) so I don't have a problem reading schematics. I just can't find where A23456 terminates at X23456 in the ECU connector.

If you can point me in the right direction about this, I'd be appreciative.
Thanks.

[CharlesAFerg]

Squirrels or mice? Bummer. I wish I could help.

[ryan roopnarine]

Squirrels or mice? Bummer. I wish I could help.

Its two+ cats, different cats at different points. I saw a stray run under there last week, and I had to pound on the hood to get it to go away, so I'm pretty sure that it is still happening to some extent. If only cats were PO'd by the same things that pine martens were...