CBUSB5S4
05-02-2011, 11:13 AM
I recently bought an M3 and was all excited until a couple of weeks later when I found out it had very low compression in cylenders 1 and 2. I figured I would just sell it as is, take my losses, and move on. It sucked to have my new car excitement turn sour so fast.
Well long story short, I am a sucker for a project and I have a habit of "saving" cars, so I decided to fix the problem.
The leak down confirmed the problem was in the head, so I started searching for a replacement. After a week or so of searching, pricing them out, and reading about the R&R process I was not very hopeful. The heads on these S52s are pricy, and installation intimidated me. So I started looking for an entire engine. A little research told me engine R&R is not much harder than doing the head, and with 145k on my engine, I decided this was the way to go.
After 2 days of searching I determined the price of somthing with less than 100k on it was between $2000 and $3000. There was one engine on Carpart.com in Texas with 54,000 miles on it, but it was listed without a price. I figured "if you have to ask you cant afford it", but decided to call anyway. I was initially shocked at the offer price I heard. $1,500 SHIPPED to my door!!! This was too good to be true, so I did 3 days worth of research, including running a credit check, running a carfax on the wrecked car, and sending someone in my industry out to scope out the place. I decided to go for it. When the engine arrived I couldn't have been happier- it looked brand new! Upon closer inspection the rear O2 sensor wires and a vaccum hose were cut, but otherwise this looked to be a great engine.
Fast forward to today: The old engine is out, the engine bay is clean, and the new engine should be going in this week. I'll post pics and maybe do a write up on the process eventually. There are some things no book or posts I could find addressed that I think the community should know. One that drove me crazy is that there were only 10 bolts mounting the tranny to the engine, rather than the 11 that Pelican Parts describes. Thats not that big of a deal, except after I got the 10 out I still couldn't get the two seperated, so I kept looking for the 11th bolt. It turns out ther is a little alignment pin on the starter that goes into the tranny that was seized. It took 2 hours of work to get the tranny disconnected from the engine AFTER I got the bolts off. I was afraid to pry at first due to thinking it might be a bolt, and a lot of time was spent feeling around for the bolt head. By the way, with the engine on a hoist and tilted the trans bolts are easy to get off.
So thats it for now. Wish me luck on getting everything back together, and I'll keep you posted with the progress.
Well long story short, I am a sucker for a project and I have a habit of "saving" cars, so I decided to fix the problem.
The leak down confirmed the problem was in the head, so I started searching for a replacement. After a week or so of searching, pricing them out, and reading about the R&R process I was not very hopeful. The heads on these S52s are pricy, and installation intimidated me. So I started looking for an entire engine. A little research told me engine R&R is not much harder than doing the head, and with 145k on my engine, I decided this was the way to go.
After 2 days of searching I determined the price of somthing with less than 100k on it was between $2000 and $3000. There was one engine on Carpart.com in Texas with 54,000 miles on it, but it was listed without a price. I figured "if you have to ask you cant afford it", but decided to call anyway. I was initially shocked at the offer price I heard. $1,500 SHIPPED to my door!!! This was too good to be true, so I did 3 days worth of research, including running a credit check, running a carfax on the wrecked car, and sending someone in my industry out to scope out the place. I decided to go for it. When the engine arrived I couldn't have been happier- it looked brand new! Upon closer inspection the rear O2 sensor wires and a vaccum hose were cut, but otherwise this looked to be a great engine.
Fast forward to today: The old engine is out, the engine bay is clean, and the new engine should be going in this week. I'll post pics and maybe do a write up on the process eventually. There are some things no book or posts I could find addressed that I think the community should know. One that drove me crazy is that there were only 10 bolts mounting the tranny to the engine, rather than the 11 that Pelican Parts describes. Thats not that big of a deal, except after I got the 10 out I still couldn't get the two seperated, so I kept looking for the 11th bolt. It turns out ther is a little alignment pin on the starter that goes into the tranny that was seized. It took 2 hours of work to get the tranny disconnected from the engine AFTER I got the bolts off. I was afraid to pry at first due to thinking it might be a bolt, and a lot of time was spent feeling around for the bolt head. By the way, with the engine on a hoist and tilted the trans bolts are easy to get off.
So thats it for now. Wish me luck on getting everything back together, and I'll keep you posted with the progress.