Okay, here it goes.... So, I've been reading this forum for 18 months now and purchased my first 2002 a year ago. After picking up the car (long distance purchase), the engine began to knock. It got so loud that I was only able to drive it for a couple miles. Long story short, the P.O. and I worked out a deal and I kept the non-running car.

The car has been sitting in storage while I tried to figure out what to do with the engine. At first, I looked into having a shop rebuild the engine but a stock rebuild seemed too expensive and used running engines were difficult to come by. I then started reading about the S14 and M20 swaps. The S14 intrigued me since Aardvark racing sells a step-by-step manual. Although the M20 swap was considerably cheaper, cutting up the transmission tunnel was not a job that I wanted to tackle.

However, after months of reading I decided on the M20 swap for several reasons (not to mention cost!). A local junk yard had just received a 1990 325i and I was able to source an e21 323i transmission from another member on the board. My next task was to contact Dan Williams for the engine mounts - SOLD (I bought the last set he had available at the time). Now I was fully committed to the conversion, only problem - I have never really worked on a car other than changing the oil, rotating the tires and wiring a stereo...

...until this last weekend. Got the car out of storage and it now sits in our garage. I started the dismantling process over the weekend and actually pulled the engine and transmission from the car last night! I'm sure I'll be posting more questions as I continue with this swap and will honestly try to document the process as I move along. Thanks to my buddy Tom A. who helped in the engine removal process & thanks to everyone who posts on this forum, it is an invaluable resource!

Cheers,
Chris

Arrival on flatbed


Front


Recovered Recaros


Engine Removal

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Last edited by cjreents on 6-30-08 09:47; edited 5 times in total