What would you do?

[malsam]

Picked up a 04 325xi for cheap. Body is good, has high mileage and am always looking for project cars. Not many BMWs in eastern MT! Here is what I have found....several vac leaks. Ordered new boots, and all new hoses for ccv, recovery tank and a new DISA valve. Read a lot of threads where this seems to be an issue and will replace these parts as soon as they show. Ran compression test and #6 has 125psi. The rest vary from 149-158. Leakdown showed intake and slight in crankcase. Started it today to pull into the shop and it was missing pretty good. Anyone’s thoughts at a reman long block with the high mileage and I don’t know how it was cared for? Walk away from the project and park it in the weeds? It’s a sporty car and sharp looking but worried bout the low compression. Appreciate anyone’s thoughts.

[Jackson42]

It is my experience that these cars are pretty rough on exhaust valves. There are two E46 cars in our family; both of them had uneven compression, and I ended up doing cylinder head overhauls on both of them. The exhaust valves and guides were pretty well shot on both of them; have a really good cylinder head guy here in SoCal, and he replaced the exhaust valves and guides, ground all valves and skimmed the surfaces of the heads. On the 330Ci, after the overhaul, I've got 185+/-5PSI and less than 4% leakdown in any cylinder. Bottom ends on both of them looked really good, so long blocks were not indicated. Put them back together, and after chasing a couple of other bugs, both of them are running really well. One has 175K and the other has 162K on the clock.

[malsam]

Thanks for the response. Kinda lacking on machine shops here without shipping off the heads. Car has 220k. When the weather is warmer it has run very well but today when it was cold it was pretty definate. Was going to call Bavarian Auto recycle on Monday and price out some options. I would feel better dumping money into something with less mileage.

[MIKYZZ4]

Don't toss out the baby with the bathwater just yet,
try this first:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vo4fm0JDPY

[MarcoZandrini]

Scan the engine computer (DME) and the tranny computer (EGS) for codes. Yes, cylinder #6 isn’t up to snuf but there may be other issues lurking. The cause of the leakdown could be carboned up rings.