engine swap

[E30m42cab]

A compression test is cheap... or fairly easy to do yourself if you have a tester. It'll check how much compression each cylinder has and tell you if you lose compression... (weather or not your vavles are seating properly, if your piston rings are worn, potential head gasket problem... basically it's getting a pre-operation check-up to make sure it's healthy enough for a turbo, assuming you still want one.
Can we see some pics of the beast?

 

[Doughnut]

A compression test is cheap... or fairly easy to do yourself if you have a tester. It'll check how much compression each cylinder has and tell you if you lose compression... (weather or not your vavles are seating properly, if your piston rings are worn, potential head gasket problem... basically it's getting a pre-operation check-up to make sure it's healthy enough for a turbo, assuming you still want one.
Can we see some pics of the beast?

To explain the test in detail, a spark plug is removed one at a time, and the pipe from the guage is inseted and held tightly in the hole while the car is cranked over (remembering to remove the main lead from the coil)
Go buy your self a gauge and learn something

 

[jrt67ss350]

Justin, I'm not saying that I've done the "e" to "i" conversion, or that I understand it, but I've heard of it being done before.

No problem! I was just pointing out for everyone's sake that it takes much more than a simple head swap to do an e to i conversion. In my time working with the 325e, I've found that the e to i conversion seems to be the most misunderstood performance boosting modification surrounding these cars. There is a lot of bad information about the "swap" floating around the internet. Just throwing some info out there.

hahaha ya it is pretty old but it is in AMAZING SHAPE!! I was messing around with it today and its seriosuly in immaculate condition.

I would love to see some pictures of your car. If it is in really amazing shape, I personally wouldn't hack it up with a turbo or anything like that. It is not very easy to find these cars in good, unmolested shape anymore. How many miles are on it? If it were my car, I would keep it faithful to its stock form, but that's just my opinion.

 

[foolonrampage]

WOW, that actually sounds amazing. haha. Maybe when u guys see the car you could tell me what i can do to it.

 

[foolonrampage]

i believe there are 163,000 miles or so on it. and it still runs pretty BUFF. haha. for a little fella

 

[E30m42cab]

No problem! I was just pointing out for everyone's sake that it takes much more than a simple head swap to do an e to i conversion. In my time working with the 325e, I've found that the e to i conversion seems to be the most misunderstood performance boosting modification surrounding these cars. There is a lot of bad information about the "swap" floating around the internet. Just throwing some info out there.

That's good, I had no idea there was that much work to do! I'm glad you informed us, and I'm glad you know so much about these cars. It's too bad you don't own one any more. Hopefully your knowledge won't get rusty now that you don't work on them any more.
(BTW, I PM'd you Justin.)

 

[foolonrampage]

thanks for all the help guys. I posted some pics in another thread. check it out if you want. im pretty excited to get some of these upgrades. [bmwdance]

 

[echothreezero]

Sorry if I repeat some of what is said above, but I just skimmed through.

As someone said you can do an e to i conversion. What you end up with (by changing head, pistons, and a few other bits - basically you only use the 2.7 block and conrods) is a 2.7l m20 that flows like a 325 but with more displacement. Since you are essentially doing a full rebuild, how about beefing up the internals and lowering the compression for a turbo setup while you are there? unfortunately this is where costs skyrocket. Stock m20 internals will handle around 13psi or so - beef them up and skys the limit within reason. But its alot of work, you'll need turbo headers and exhaust - tons of fabrication, custom intake, intercooler (hard to fit one in, but possible), custom engine management, fuel pumps, lines and injectors and the list goes on.

You are lucky in one respect being LHD the steering linkage is on that side. Friends of mine have to try and fit their turbo and manifold around this as we are RHD.

Here's a pic of a mates 318is turbo(not m20 motor, but similar idea) Link

Or if you don't like this idea and want to stay BMW then you could do an m50 or m52 swap, but then you run into the problem of bang for buck - if you are doing that kind of work you may as well go s50. But then you want to source an euro s50 as you poor old yanks only get the US version which is, shall we say, a bit lacking on the one the rest of the world got.

Other popular swaps include mazda 13b rotary swaps, nissan sr20det and rb25det, and some toyota swaps. There are even some lexus V8 and BMW V12 swaps floating around (including one in my local club - lexus v8).

So, what do you think?