Last week my son threw a rod in his little BMW 318Ti.

So after some thought I decided to fix it myself. One to save money, two to spend some time with the boy and show him how we used to do things.

So we found a complete motor with harness and everything attached and borrowed my cousins cherry picker and got to work.

Man what a huge pain in the butt. This thing is so over engineered with so many connections an fasteners on it. It's just crazy, the transmission alone had 2 sizes of reverse star bolts on it and allen screws, wtf? I could have swapped the motor in my old Nova several time by now.

We finally got it out just a little while ago. Now just waiting on some new parts and motor mounts to start putting the new one back in.

Wish me luck.

Good luck. It probably would have been cheaper and easier to convert to a Chevy engine, and get better mileage and power to boot.

Lol, maybe. I'm just trying to get him back on the road the quickest way possible.

I'm getting tired of driving him to school in the morning.

Maybe next time I will have the confidence for a more complicated swap.

Like something for my truck.

I used to have an old '89 325i...it was a PITA to work on. the ONLY good thing they engineered in that car was a fuel pump access port under the back seat so that you could change the fuel pump without dropping the tank...

Aloicious wrote:

I used to have an old '89 325i...it was a PITA to work on. the ONLY good thing they engineered in that car was a fuel pump access port under the back seat so that you could change the fuel pump without dropping the tank...

The 89 Flod Plobe was like that. That's pretty neat.

There are some really nice pieces on it, but overall it's just overkill.

I just took off the exhaust header and it's like a piece of art. A real 4 tube header with a solid machined flange and really thick steel. The whole exhaust system is made the same way.

Previous owner had the clutch plate in backwards too.

Well, I got it done. Fired it up and it purrs like a kitten. So much better than the old engine ever sounded.

My first engine swap in over 25 years, but I guess I didn't forget everything. Glad everything works though.

My son thinks it's pretty cool too now. I'm sure a few times over the last week he was probably wondering if the old man really new what he was doing.

I just had to laugh. I have one vehicle I never want to work on A porche. There was a younger guy that wrecked his porche, bought one with a bad engine, then wanted the engines swapped. I didn't do that but I had to change the mastercylinder. You barely could get your fingers to get at the bolts. We never did get it to idle . I had no idea what to do, the snap on scanner didn't have a program for the porche. Of course the rack and pinion steering leaked bad. Philip from Switzerland came over on a work program. He had bought an older BMW. Just before he went back, he drained the coolant and oil. All of us bet how long it would run. Over 6 minutes before the piston and rod went through the block. Then we lined up to cars and another co-worker who has a lifted 78 Chevy that had a 396 in it drove over the cars. Then the owner of Western Wheelers backed a bed truck over the cars. Then they drove quads over them. Turned out to be a fun night. No the other car wasn't the Porche, that got crushed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNI8izHRYgs&feature=share

CrazyHoe wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNI8izHRYgs&feature=share

relevant