My 318ti build

[Jclare318ti]

Hey, just wanted to introduce myself and talk about why I joined

I’m a BMW Tech in Cincinnati, and I just bought a 318ti auto from a tech unable to fix a blown head gasket, so I took it off his hands and I plan on building it from the ground up

Already pulled the engine and trans and have to engine torn down to the bare block

During my research for the build, I found some intriguing things I want to try with this car

The first mods I will be undertaking are swapping the auto for a manual trans, and rebuilding the bottom end of the engine

I haven’t seen anyone else try this, but I’ve found N20 pistons are the same size and have the same size wrist pins as the M44, and one of the other techs in my shop provided me with a set to test this theory

A couple of benefits of using the N20 pistons are a slightly higher compression ratio, they are lighter, they have larger valve cutouts (I plan on putting a larger lift cam in eventually, which would be an issue with M44 pistons) and they are built for boost already if I decide to go that route

So those are my immediate plans, I will update with pics as I move through it, so here is a small photo dump from the first couple of steps







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