Ideal donor car?

[SHunter]

Hey guys. I'm thinking about a 24v swap for this Winter and I have my sights set on an m52b28. I haven't done a swap in one of these cars before so I'm sure I'll be learning a lot along the way. Since my car has over 250k miles on it I'd like to replace the engine, tranny, and rear end all together with newer parts. I'm thinking the way to go would be to buy a donor car to harvest all the bits from and sell the rest of the parts. My question is, are some cars more desirable for this. Does a Z3 have a better LSD for instance than a 528? Are there other options to look for when picking out my donor car?

SH

[SHunter]

Since nobody's replied to the above, I'll try a more direct question. Right now I'm looking out for a wrecked z3 because of the ability to use the suspension parts for a 5lug swap while doing the engine swap.

According to wikipedia the z3 also came with the m52b28 but with an aluminum block unlike the 328 which had the iron block. Can anyone confirm this or point me to a better source for info? Sounds pretty nice.

I've read quite a bit about 24v swaps here but there isn't too much info on the m52 engines. Have people had any problems running the dual vanos from the technical update cars? I plan on sticking with OBD2 but with EWS, airpump, etc deleted from the computer.

I'd like to assume that all Z3's will have an LSD and a sporting final drive ratio. Am I assuming too much. Since I might not be able to find one locally, I also might not have a chance to check out every option on the car I get.

-SH

[Adrian_Visser]

Alloy block m52s i.e. not m52TUs are quite rare good luck finding one. As for the m52TU if you had a complete donor car it would be the same as any other OBDII swap AFAIK.