hard starting, poor idling, rough running e30

[JHahn22@xxxxxxx]

Hello everyone,
here is my problem. . .
since I've owned my 87 325i, it has almost never started at the first turn of 
the key when cold.  But almost always on the second try.  Once started, it 
usually hesitates a little for a about 20 or 30 seconds when pulling away 
from a stop.  I've been meaning to address this problem, but haven't had 
time.  Now it's getting bad.  Even after the engine is fully warm, if I'm 
sitting at a stoplight, or anywhere where the engine is idling for very long, 
it almost stalls out completely when I try to take off.  I've found that if I 
rev it up to about 1500-2000 and then ease off the clutch, I can usually take 
off ok, but something is definitely wrong.  It even hesitated to same way, 
giving a little jerk a couple times when I tried putting my foot into the gas 
a little at highway speeds.  It's also always had a fairly rough idle.  It's 
steady, but it feels shaky inside the car, plenty of vibration, and a 
sporadic slight bucking of the engine.  I know I need to adjust the valves 
soon, so hopefully that's all that is (maybe)
I remember hearing some common cold starting problem with E30's, and the 
symptoms sort of feel related to the original cold start problem.  I can't 
remember what that fix was though.  I'm about to tackle this with a fuel 
pressure gauge and see what I can figure out, but I'm wondering if this is 
one of those "they all do that" type of problems.
The car has 200k miles on it, if that helps point to anything.
Thanks for any help on this,
Jake Hahn
Austin TX

------------------------------

End of bmw-digest V9 #2197
**************************