Hi, i am based in the uk and am currently looking for some advice on my turbo m50. i currently own a e30 which has had a m52b28 engine swapped into it and had always looked at running a turbo in the car since i bought it. the car has recently been showing signs of headgasket failure and this has pushed me to finally replace the engine with a turbo one. After looking around i found myself looking at a cheap m50b25 nv which seemed like a good deal and i had seen videos of the car running which sounded okay, i therefore made the purchase and found myself with asnother engine. I soon began to take the engine appart to check the overall condition and make sure everything was okay before it saw some boost, knowing i would have to replace the gasket and studs anyway. i not long realised that it was a good idea to check the engine as i started to see small lumps of metal and after taking the head off was amazed the engine even ran as it seemed the engine had sucked up some metal which had detonated and damaged two of the pistons (engine ran a small deisel turbo before i bought it) good news it is doesnt seem to have done any damage to the head or cylinder walls somehow and i have just had the machine shop look at it and they think it will be okay, but its going to be skimmed and the vavles sorted and will know for sure if the block is okay soon. I also have a couple of engine lying around, one of them being a m54b30, id always planned for a simple turbo build and just keep the engine as stock as possibly but of course that is never the case, I am now toying with the idea of using the internals from the m54.
I have began to buy some parts for the build, manifold, fuel pump, spark plugs, injectors, stuff to refresh the m50 engine as well as a hx35 turbo and I ideally would be looking for around 500hp give or take with pump fuel.
my questions are is it worth using the internals from the m54 as it seems to be a straight swap and the pistons are stronger and the crank is forged and the same in the us m3. is all of this true, or is there something I'm missing
how much power roughly can the m54 internals handle?
is there a better combination I could make with using internals from the m52b28?
what head gasket would work, I was looking at a cosmetic 0.140, is this ok?
ik when it comes to cams, its a bit more difficult with the non vanos engine as I cant just straight swap cams out of other engines like the m54 without modding. Id therefore need to buy some new more aggressive cams unless theres some I would be able to fit that I am missing?
overall would it be a good idea to run a stoker engine, is it more reliable and stronger or should I just not bother and get some used pistons and keep my engine as stock as possible. I don't have all the money in the world so don't want to go out buying brand new forged pistons ideally.
Sorry If this information has already been mentioned in other threads, I have been looking around as much as possible and a lot of information seems to be mixed or incorrect on this topic so just want to clear a few things out
cheers
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