Swapping M44 parts into an M42

[Anthony B]

Hi Guys

I know the m44 & m42 are almost identical, can the cam tray & cams be swapped in an m42? I've found an m44 for sale which is nice & cheap, rather than using the whole m44 i wanted to retain the m42 cause I know the m42 has slightly beefier internals.

this is my m42 cams as the original owner had a serve case of the dumb & jammed the intake cam tray on the exhaust side & vice versa with the other cam tray

[roguetoaster]

Holy mother of goodness, that is the worst cam I have ever seen!

Pretty sure the cams are a different profile, at least they should be, they are at least different P/Ns. As for the trays and bearings, I would bank on them being the same, although I cannot find the M44 part numbers to compare.

[Anthony B]

Damn :/ I may continue my hunting of an m30b35, the best part the cam tray & bearings are in worse condition, still can't figure out how he put the trays in wrong

[roguetoaster]

Damn :/ I may continue my hunting of an m30b35, the best part the cam tray & bearings are in worse condition, still can't figure out how he put the trays in wrong

Would take sooooooooo much torque to achieve that level of destruction. Or he prelubricated the bearing area with something massively abrasive, or maybe just ran the engine for ages with no oil at high RPM without a lower end bearing failure. How does compression seem to you, if it is suspect I would replace the engine as the car would seem to have been abused.

BTW at least an M30 is not another dang M5x, good on ya for wanting to go that route instead!

[Anthony B]

the engine basically ran with no oil to cam oil journals the cam trays the way he installed them blocked the oil galleries :/ I'm going to assume he didn't use any reassembly grease either.

I should have done that before I pulled the head, the annoying part this motor has 130,000 & it took one idiot to bring it to an early death. The pistons look brand new but have a bit of slap nothing drastic. The m42 in Australia is impossible to find, all our 318's where the m10 in the early model & the m40 in the late models.

I'm going to save my dollars, I've found a high compression m30b35 & just need to hunt more swap parts. I like the way the m30 pulls I had an e28 as my first car it was a b28 & it pulled like a tank

[sweet3]

It's actually not that hard to make the mistake of installing them backwards. The exhaust has an 'A' and the intake has an 'E' on it. 'E' is often mistaken for "exhaust." Apart from two little dowels on the base of the cam tray locaters that you have to crush when tightening the cam down, you won't know the difference when they're tightened down. And what happens when they're swapped is the oil galley holes don't line up on the trays and they run dry very quickly. Easy mistake, sorry it happened bro :/

[roguetoaster]

Interesting tidbit there, one I had completely forgotten about!

[Anthony B]

It's actually not that hard to make the mistake of installing them backwards. The exhaust has an 'A' and the intake has an 'E' on it. 'E' is often mistaken for "exhaust." Apart from two little dowels on the base of the cam tray locaters that you have to crush when tightening the cam down, you won't know the difference when they're tightened down. And what happens when they're swapped is the oil galley holes don't line up on the trays and they run dry very quickly. Easy mistake, sorry it happened bro :/

To put the cam trays in on the wrong side took me pushing them in & having to really force them in, on the correct side they almost fell into place. I have a sneaking suspicion the guy just had no clue what was going on. I had a look at the valves on the motor & 10/16 visually bent.

I pulled the read cradle out & found, the diff mount finger tight, carrier bolts finger tight, drive shaft flange on with two bolts. On a plus it made pulling it apart very easy lol

Im hunting down an m42 after speaking with a mate who builds e30s he's got me hunting another motor, cat cams, & ITB's