I’ve been plugging away at this swap for about 12 months now. Now that it’s up and running I thought I would share what I learned.
Swap difficulty? The most technical repair I’ve ever done on my car was probably a new clutch install or A/C installation in my last s52 swapped e30 (I didn’t do that swap). I would say that it’s challenging to gather all the information, but mechanically it wasn’t that difficult because of great guys like Arc Asylum out there and electronically it wasn’t difficult either thanks to Andrew325is and gpeterson.
Cost? Well…you can see it for yourself in my parts spreadsheet. I went into this thinking that there was no way it could cost over $10k. Boy was I wrong. You can certainly do it cheaper and easily spend a lot more.
Lessons Learned:
I plan to add pictures and so forth, but most importantly I just wanted to get this out there so everyone could see the shopping list:
Getting that weak m42 out of there:
My engine is here!
Wait....this engine/transmission looks like they rolled it down a hill and punched holes in it!
I'm not even exaggerating....the transmission had a hole in the side of it. They shipped it to me like that and didn't mention it. I wouldn't know until later that pretty much everything bolted to the outside of the engine was damaged. I won't say them by name, but it came from a forum member and a shop in the NE. We sort of worked it out but I was pretty stuck after paying $700 to ship the engine to Texas.
Install day:
Going in:
Wiring day:
Now to get the car looking good. Hopefully it will look even better than the last car:
Swap difficulty? The most technical repair I’ve ever done on my car was probably a new clutch install or A/C installation in my last s52 swapped e30 (I didn’t do that swap). I would say that it’s challenging to gather all the information, but mechanically it wasn’t that difficult because of great guys like Arc Asylum out there and electronically it wasn’t difficult either thanks to Andrew325is and gpeterson.
Cost? Well…you can see it for yourself in my parts spreadsheet. I went into this thinking that there was no way it could cost over $10k. Boy was I wrong. You can certainly do it cheaper and easily spend a lot more.
Lessons Learned:
- Take your time to find your engine. See it running or buy it from someone local that is super reputable. Pay more for it….the engine isn’t really that expensive in the grand scheme of the whole project. I bought my engine off the forum and it came from a “reputable” shop in NJ but it was a complete fiasco. Up until the day I fired it up I questioned the condition of the internals.
- Get as complete a setup from the donor car as possible. It’s all the onesy-twosy stuff that kills the budget and time
I plan to add pictures and so forth, but most importantly I just wanted to get this out there so everyone could see the shopping list:
Getting that weak m42 out of there:
My engine is here!
Wait....this engine/transmission looks like they rolled it down a hill and punched holes in it!
I'm not even exaggerating....the transmission had a hole in the side of it. They shipped it to me like that and didn't mention it. I wouldn't know until later that pretty much everything bolted to the outside of the engine was damaged. I won't say them by name, but it came from a forum member and a shop in the NE. We sort of worked it out but I was pretty stuck after paying $700 to ship the engine to Texas.
Install day:
Going in:
Wiring day:
Now to get the car looking good. Hopefully it will look even better than the last car:
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