As much as I wanted to do this swap myself, I ended up having to pay a friend to do some of the work while I was at work. My crappy automatic transmission finally bit the dust and I needed to get the swap done as quickly as possible to avoid having to ride the motorcycle all winter. That said, there was some real progress today!!!
Engine out!
Bye bye wimpy four banger (for sale btw)
Hello 2.8L I6!
And while I'm at it, why not toss in some (almost) new Yokohama Avid Envigors
Also have a limited slip 3.73 differential on the way with e30 axles. I am worried it will be too high a ratio but I guess I'll know soon enough. Anyone with an m52 using one of these? How do you like it?
New radiator, waterpump, thermostat/housing and all hoses, etc. Also found out that the donor has an X-Brace and Bilsteins! I plan to use the front brakes, springs, and shocks if they aren't bent up from the PO leaving the ebrake off and letting it roll down a hill into a tree. Once the engine was out, I was able to see the cause of my elusive "weird steering wheel kind wobbly feeling". The rack is pretty much toast. I'll be buying a new one soon.
I am hoping to recover a little bit of the cost of all this stuff by parting out the donor. Plenty of good stuff left on it if anyone is interesting. Also, will have a 4.10 open diff, getrag manual transmission (bought it previously for the swap but decided to use the zf in the donor instead), 318ti exhaust, dme, etc.