Posted by Art on February 21, 2004 at 10:13:20 from 68.126.204.112
In Reply to: egine swap 528i posted by BRIAN HADLOCK on February 20, 2004 at 14:00:34:
hey brian
what year do you have?
is your car auto or manual?
I can't tell you definitively what would be a good easy swap, but I can tell you from my recent experience putting a 3.5 from a 91 735il into my 79 528i keeping my original L-Jet. I had a shop do the install, so I couldn't give you mechanical advice. However, if you do have an automatic transmission, make sure that the dowell connection points on the engine you do swap in match up with the bell housing of your transmission. Mine didn't, so we had to modify the the connection points where the engine connects to the transmission. We drilled a new dowell location where there was a space to do it, and weld on a dowell connection piece taken off a stock 2.8l engine.
The engine and tranny are doing well together, but the swap wasn't just a straight bolt-on. The other thing to keep in mind when choosing an engine is that depending on what you get, you may need to custom fabricate new engine mounts.
Post again what car you have, and maybe someone else here can give you a good answer for your needs.
The good thing about keeping the L-jet as opposed to going with the motronic fuel injection that came with my new engine is the wiring issues. At least in my situation, if we kept the motronic, we would have had to extend the wiring (there's a bunch) so that we could house the computer in my glove box or custom fabricate some other weather proof container to house the computer.
I also purchased the 4HP22 transmission from the same car, but because of its larger size and install issues, never installed it. The transmission from that car is electronic versus my stock which is mechanical. I may be wrong with regards to how this effects Motronic systems, but one of the issues we faced was that because the engine and the transmission from the 91 both speak to each other electronically, they also work closely with the 91 intrument cluster, which of course I don't have in my 79. We never got as far as to figure out if that would screw things up or not.
So essentially in the end, by keeping my stock 3HP22 tranny and keeping my stock L-jet, the end result is just a bigger displacement engine for my car. The 3.5 will fit fine in your engine compartment.
Again, if you post the year of your car and whether its manual or auto, maybe someone else here can give a difinitive answer. Check out www.metricmechanic.com too before you search for a 3.5 engine. I wish I had known about them before I went through the fiasco that I did. Just a thought.
Good luck
-art