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[quote="Bentworker"]The conversion is a pain, but I still think it would be worth it.

I started the swap with a E36 M42 engine.  The reason I went with the E36 engine was that Downing Atlanta makes a nice supercharger kit, and in stock form it makes more hp than the E30 M42.  The appeal to me was that I could have a 2002 that could keep up with the S14 guys, but the big cost savings would be that the M42 could be rebuilt or replaced for far cheaper than a S14, although the initial cost would be about the same for the two, the used S14's seem to fetch about $4500+ now, and the M42 engines can be found for $1500-2300, and the supercharger kit is about $3800.   The thing that scared me about the S14 engines was that they are very expensive to rebuild, I figured I could have 10G into an engine after I bought a used one and had it rebuilt to lessen the fear of scattering it all over the road.  I started out the swap by installing a front sump E30 M42 oil pan, and tweaking a dipstick tube to fit around the different drive belt arrangement of the E36 engine.  Next I ditched the AC compressor along with the power steering pump, and found a shorter drive belt that worked.  After all that, I took a 2002 sub frame and cut off the stock steering idler arm mount.  I fabricated a custom idler arm mount based of a E28 idler arm (it used a E28 idler arm bushing).  This allowed the use of the stock steering without swapping in a rack.  The transmission I chose was a getrag 240 5 speed  out of an E30 M42 powered car, which is pretty small, but has no mechanical speedometer (although you could swap the tail housing from a E21 getrag 240 which does have a mechanical speedometer) .  After all this I pulled the stock brake booster and master cyllinder out of the way and dropped it into the engine compartment and started to make engine mounts.

That was when I stopped working on it.

The engine mounts needed finishing, the harness needed to be wired up, a transmission crossmember and shift linkage needed to be made, the driveshaft needed to be shortened, and I needed to come up with a more compact setup for the brake master cylinder (no room for a booster)  I was planning on using a tilton dual cylinder setup.

Anyway, now all of my stuff is for sale, check the FS forum if you are crazy enough to finish off what I started.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do,
Peter[/quote]

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