Here is the donor car. An absolute little stunner, 91, H reg 325i touring in pretty much tip top condition. Full service history throughout and well maintained. It's pretty clear that it has mostly been garaged through it's life too.
Spec includes the usual stuff, Electric front windows, Electric roof etc. No OBC, but I have one to fit. It does have an iS lip though, which looks nice. The car came to me with a failed head gasket so I whipped the head off yesterday to check it out. The plan was to swap with a known good head, give it a service and run around in it for a few weeks until I had time to do the engine swap.
Well, best laid plans and all that. I took the head off yesterday and to cut a long story short, the engine was beyond help. So I couldn't just look at it could I?
I bought an S50B30 engine and gearbox a couple of weeks ago 'just in case' this moment should arise! The engine came with the gearbox attached and on a pallet. So I whipped the M20 out of the touring this morning, dropped the prop and ancillaries and prepped the S50 for fitting.
I gave the engine bay and the new S0 a serious treat with the steam cleaner first.
I had to remove the S50 sump, fit a new M50 E34 item with E34 pickup, remove the baffles and refit the whole thing. I also removed the oil pickup bracket from No. 3 main cap, removed and welded the oil pump sprocket and tightened the oil pump bolts.
All was going well until I dropped one of the sump bolts into the gearbox
so, off with the gearbox, remove bolt and refit gearbox.After a lot more prodding and pushing, refitting this and that. This is how it stands tonight:
Not bad for twelve hours work eh? My aim is to see just how long and how much an S50 conversion can cost, so I'll be logging all the time spent on it and also the total cost.
The finished project will be as follows: Ireland engineering ARB's front and rear, full Spax suspension kit, full rebush front and back with M3 genuine bushes, modified adjustable rear subframe, Uprated brakes (Tba), standard 15â€a BBS to complete the sleeper look but I may not be able to resist a tiny little M badge
Call it an experiment
great work mate. Thats gonna go like s**t down a water slide. 
would be interesting to know the costing's involved in this converson!! Smashin work keep her lit!!!!
Still, it was a chance to explore where everything goes I suppose! If the engine is taken out by anyone "in the know" then the loom is left on and the ECU and the X69 and X20 plugs disconnected.
