I'm somewhat terrible at taking pictures of progress but I've been working along trying to get the motor back together.
The motor came out of a 1997 328i automatic convertible with 155k miles (my ti is about to hit 211k).
I pulled the oil pan off to get access to the oil pump, oil pickup tube, and crankshaft. IJ crank scrapers needed me to take pictures of the crankshaft to ensure they sent me the correct scraper profile. (Still waiting on that to arrive)
In the meantime, I pulled the valve cover and noticed the wonderful VCG job the previous person did. They just missed a spot tucking the gasket into the groove, no biggie. I'm happy that there appears to be some kind of maintenance done on this motor.
With the valve cover off it was the prime time to replace the VANOS seals and bearing ring (rattle kit). I rented the timing tools from bimmertoolrental.com and got everything pretty quickly.
I had to reinstall the harmonic balancer without the AC pulley (use 6x M8x12 grade 8.8 bolts) to set the crank at TDC.
The cam blocks dropped right in and it was ready to go. Of course it was at that point I realized I didn't have an E10 inverse torx so off to Advance Auto.
With the E10 everything came apart easily. The rattle kit actually went in without needing any adjusting, which was amazing, and the seals were easy to reinstall. Put it back together and tried to slowly turn the exhaust sprocket without missing any teeth on the intake gear. We'll see if that worked out when I fire it up, lol.
I have to take the oil pump shaft and thermostat housing to my friend's place, he's got a press and endmill. T-stat mating surface was hilariously not flat, no wonder people complain about them leaking. More updates soon.