take two...

[munky30]

Today I started the second engine swap.

Took out the old one, easy as pie, took an hour and a half.

Put the fan, pulleys, alternator and power steering pump assembly onto the new one as it didnt have power steering and took the oil filter/oil cooler thingy off the old one ready to go onto the new one (I did this myself, I have dirty hands and a cut to prove it. This is a big deal. I normally pass spanners and make tea)

Got the whole engine ready to go in, then realised bmw in their infinite wisdom have used some wierd bolt thing (I was told what it is, I want to say hex but its not) to hold on the gearbox and we dont have the right tools.

So I cant take the box off the old engine and put it on the new one... I now have a car with no engine, and two half built engines sat on the driveway.... Not happy..

But tomorrow we will have tools, and a working 325... I hope.

One small hiccup though... the diff has split in the middle, pulled apart where the bit with splines is. I've been told that these are a bitch to put back together as they have to go in a certain way, with certain splines in certain places... is this so or is it just the m3 props that need that?

Pictures will follow tomorrow, we spent too long scratching our chins and phoning people to look for the right tools to take any today.

[Jamesb318is]

What you want to say is torx bolts, that you need a female socket for . Apparently you can get away with a normal hex socket of the right size, but i'd wait to save rounding things off.
The prop isnt hard to put back together, but ideally it needs to go back together in the same place as they are balanced as one piece. If you look carefully, there may be two matching dots showing where the two halfs line up.

[munky30]

torx! thats the one. thank you. We got the top ones off with a normal socket but the little ones on the bottom proved to be a bit more tricky.

Will have a look at the diff tomorrow and hope it has little dots