Mystery e30 connector

[P_Roloff]

I was poking around on the car today and found a mystery connector sitting up by the fuse box on my e30. I’m curious to what it’s for, any ideas? The wires coming out of it are brown and green/brown. At first I figured it was from the old alarm, but it has a BMW connector on it and doesn’t look spliced in. 

[B C]

Definitely mysterious. The only 2 pin connectors like that i can think of are the coolant level sensor (slightly different plug) and the brake level sensor which you can see is already plugged in

[Boris3]

It looks familiar but I can't place it. What year is the car and how far does the cord reach?

[P_Roloff]

It’s an ‘89, it doesn’t reach far enough to reach the brake fluid reservoir, I can’t think of anything else that’s even in that area.

[Boris3]

Not long enough from what you're describing but kind of looks like part of the wiring for the ambient temp sensor (that fits in your driver's brake duct), or part of the horn harness but with the side clips broken off.

Here is a horn pigtail:https://www.ebay.com/itm/BMW-E30-Horn-Late-Model-Connector-Pig-Tails-325i-325is-325ic-318i-318is-/172961235390?hash=item28454b01be

Have you traced the wire back through the firewall and under the dash?

[P_Roloff]

Boris3 said:

Not long enough from what you're describing but kind of looks like part of the wiring for the ambient temp sensor (that fits in your driver's brake duct), or part of the horn harness but with the side clips broken off.

Here is a horn pigtail:https://www.ebay.com/itm/BMW-E30-Horn-Late-Model-Connector-Pig-Tails-325i-325is-325ic-318i-318is-/172961235390?hash=item28454b01be

Have you traced the wire back through the firewall and under the dash?

I haven’t, that’ll probably be something I do next spring when I’m back home. I forgot to mention that it did have clips on the sides, one was already broken and the other one crumbled when I was looking at it.

[straight6pwr]

it may be your car had a BMW alpine alarm/keyless back in the day.  they were never a factory option on e30s, but were installed by dealerships. its hard to find info on e30-specific systems, as they were rare to begin with ($$$) and also prone to failure, so people ripped them out along the way as they became unnecessary/obsolete.

as an example, this is an early 90s alpine BMW factory alarm/keyless system. it came on e36s/e34s/e32s. the e30 one is similar, but i cant find any photos of it. if there is/was an alarm box in your car, it would have been in the glovebox area. you might also find another floating plug for an additional horn siren somewhere under the hood.

[Jdesign]

I second that^ My car had some accessories in that area and all used factory plugs of different shapes and sizes depending on the options.

[P_Roloff]

When I’m home over break I’ll have to trace the wire through the firewall, I know the car had an alarm at one point but it wasn’t an Alpine but I suppose there isn’t any reason they couldn’t have used factory plugs for certain parts of the system.