junkyard s52

[jrobie79]

so I found an s52 at the junkyard, only 95K miles on it, problem is it overheated. total price for the whole package, w/o transmission (its automatic) is 450 bucks..... problem is it overheated.

so aside from the usual head gasket repair and probably change some other gaskets, what else am I looking at. they were unable to determine if anythign cracked b/c of the overheating

question is....is it worth it? how long can it take to get this out of the car. the junkyard will basically do nothing aside from putting it on a forklift to lift it from the engine and drop it into my pickup. I need to budget my time accordingly to get there in time and have enough daylight to get it out.

any other advice is appreciated.

[goarmy]

for 450 I think its worth it

[mbonanni]

have a friend help.

[cale]

What kind of yard won't take an engine out? Usually they'll at least tear apart the harness and cut mounts/driveshaft and yank it out, not that you want that...

[jrobie79]

he said he wouldnt because it overheated, so they dont have their warranty on the block or head...only bits like manifolds, TB, A/C compressor, I dunno, its fucked up, but how long can you estimate how long it would take to disconnect electricals, tranny, heater hoses, etc

[Adrian_Visser]

You could do it in 4 hours with a friend easy.

There really isn't much to it, unhook driveshaft (4 bolts) cut rad hoses and heater hoses, remove rad, undo x20, undo O2 sensor wiring, undo engine mount bolts, remove airbox, remove ground on passenger side of oil pan, undo wires to fusebox, cut fuel lines.

Start yanking and watch carefully for anything left connected.

[jrobie79]

forgot to mention the car sits on railroad ties and is a good 20 inches off the ground, should definitely help

[willworkfore30s]

You could probably part it for more than $450. I would definitely get it. I got my m42 out by myself never having done something like that in about 3-5 hours.

[Mr.SWISS]

If the cams and crank look good it's worth $450

[greyis89]

Hopefully the head isn't cracked somwhere. I already gambled on an overheated m50 and that's what I found. Still there are many good parts to be had.

[jrobie79]

ok so I am gonna get it, and hopefully with no major damage its just some simple part replacing....

do you guys have any suggestions on what i should change/replace while its out of the car on a stand for the first 4 months of my ownership?

[Jand3rson]

do you guys have any suggestions on what i should change/replace while its out of the car on a stand for the first 4 months of my ownership?

Everything. I would order full top and bottom end gasket and seal kits, and replace everything. If you want to go a step further, you could rebuild the head and the bottom end, but then you're getting into spending some serious cheese. But I would definitely replace every seal and gasket you can get at. Don't forget the rear main, it's easy to overlook while it's on the stand, since you don't really see it (ask me how I know).

[jrobie79]

yeah i figured I would get the head at least resurfaced, gonna start reading this part of the forum, until now it was a foreign language to me. hopefully I get it in my e30 by midsummer

[Wanganstyle]

yeah i figured I would get the head at least resurfaced, gonna start reading this part of the forum, until now it was a foreign language to me. hopefully I get it in my e30 by midsummer

In my own experience the a S52 overheated will either crack its cylinder head or kill the oil rings on the pistons. The bores may also suffer, if thus the block is dead for stock pistons/rings. you could bore and run ++ rings I suppose if the pistons were still alive

Overheating also hurts the piston pin interfaces, rod big ends, crankshaft - depending on the duration/severity of the overheat.
oil pump internals may be cooked by the overheating, waterpump/entire water system/thermostat/all hoses should be thrown in the trash.

In a Overheat anything is possible, if this was a M54 with aluminum block you would expect the block to weaken and threads for head studs to die. This will not happen to a iron deck block but all the parts will suffer.

If you are on a limited budget you may want to stay away from anything that has been prior hurt. if the bores/rings are damaged you are probably best doing a single/double overbore and pistons as well - the skirts get worn - for the newer m54 engines with teflon coated piston skirts you can actually see the gradient of the wear.

a healthy $xyz m50 can take a m54b30 crank and be happy as a 3000cc item. I'd rather have a 100% torn down M50 stroked with new everything than a used S52. S52 is almost as expensive to keep 100% as a s54.

[MaxBell]

You could do it in 4 hours with a friend easy.

There really isn't much to it, unhook driveshaft (4 bolts) cut rad hoses and heater hoses, remove rad, undo x20, undo O2 sensor wiring, undo engine mount bolts, remove airbox, remove ground on passenger side of oil pan, undo wires to fusebox, cut fuel lines.

Start yanking and watch carefully for anything left connected.

This. I pulled a 1UZ a week ago and it was done in 3 hours. Not hard, just make sure you bring the proper tools.

$450 is definitely worth it. I paid $500 for my M50B25 that I still just rebuilt.