Thanks man, glad you like it!
As for work schedule I constantly struggle with exactly the same 'real life' obligations as you do so to cut a long story short it took around 18 months to do the research and source parts for the engine (had to buy many parts twice or even three times until I got what I wanted), another 6 months to build and finalize the engine. Installation of drivetrain and replacing worn suspension parts etc. took maybe 2-3 days at most. Disassembly of the old one took 3 days in total. As for the new one I'll get to that in my next blog but it's not really a good showcase cuz pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
Agreed with your approach to what driving E30 is all about. That said you will appreciate a healthy 2.5L in there. Trust me 98% or all 325i drivers have no idea how smooth and fast the car originally was cuz all they do is drive around with worn out engines so a simple rebuilt of what you got plus a cam and some intake work is already gonna go a long way!
If you want to save some time in removing that dash, I'll provide a step-by-step how-to in my blog. I've done it around 10 times by now so...
And yeah people upvote, comment, resteem etc out of a profit making calculation which as far as I can see works for maybe 2% of all who are taking that approach :). If we can build some kind of car culture here, call it #PETROSTEEM, I'm happy!
Petrosteem! HA! If you follow Kickboxing.. Petrostyeem. :P
My motor only has 127k on the odo. Assuming the odo hasn't been abused, it should be relatively fresh motor given how low compression it is. I'm not going to lie though, when I take the car out of the city (I live in NYC) and out to the somewhat decent roads that you can find out here, I let her rip. So perhaps the previous owners have done the same and worn out the motor, but I don't have something to compare to. Maybe I need a dyno pull!
When you are talking about a rebuild, are we talking about top end only, rings and valves? Now were talking about changing the cams out.....sounds like its almost cheaper to do a M50 swap! I really wish there was a way to squeeze more MPG out of this little 2v motor.
Ha...good question. No I mean rebuilt as in EVERYTHING new and yes M50/M52 probably even V8 swap is cheaper in fact.
It's like with the S14 if you want an original era specific motor it piles up pretty quickly. In the end a matter of taste I guess. I can tell you some day why it has such poor gas mileage and I guarantee you won't believe it :). It's not cuz of the 2 valves though.