Project car

[P4g4nite]

it was still a 2.5. i think they re-did the heads or something, im not 100% sure. the redline is a bit lower than the i, but as you stated, more torque. and i could be mistaken but if i remember right, its like 2 more hp. 117 to 119, or something silly like that.

All 2.5L had a lot more bhp than that, even the 318iS had more than that. Can yo ufind a link to the car/engine you are thinking of?

I've noticed dead-engined examples come up for sale every so often, for very cheap.

Duly noted, thanks. It seems an engine swap into a host body might be the cost effective route, 325i E30's are still going for $10K+

A friend of mine have built an 320i with an 745 turbo engine (picture).

Oh. Dear. Lord.
I've seen a few 545i and I had thought about finding a bigarsed 745i (Li?) but then I regained sanity and opted to stay away from an aging turbo motor at my state of finance.

In Practical Performance Car magazine (performance tuning for grown ups) one of the contributers to the magazine has dropped a 3.5 our of a 5-series into an E30 318 AND turbo'd it for around £1000, not including the origional car I assume. It looked a bit of a bodged job tbh but if it works who cares?

I have one of those 5ers, but the huge iron block engine weighs a ton. The E30 is pretty lightweight so I won't be needing a huge amount of power to make it fun