looking at a 4,000 M3 tomorrow

[reelizmpro]

First thing to do would be to determine what's going on with the S14. Simply stating it needs new pistons yet it still runs, seems a little sketchy. It could just have a blown headgasket and/or compression loss. You can do a standard rebuild for less than $3k if you do it yourself. I understand if you'd rather swap it out though.