Theoretical engine swap

O

Osprey6010

Member
 Birmingham - England
Odd question that might spark some discussion, but I'm looking through 6 cylinder z4s, not looking to buy yet, just looking for general prices - unrelated.

I was just wondering if theoretically you could swap the n46 to an n52 (for example). I know "technically you can swap most engines", but I'm talking, "easier" than most other engines.

From what I can work out so far, all the mounting points and general hardware looks the same between a 2.0i and a 3.0i, except there obviously more engine.

Changes I'd imagine it need would be stuff like new ecu (or at least a remap), and potentially a couple more mounting brackets, new exhaust possibly.

Not looking to do this, as it would cost the same as a new z4 and has a million things that could go wrong, I'm talking purely hypothetical, for a nice bit of discussion.
 
I'd guess:

- Engine and accessories
- Engine mounts
- exhaust
- gearbox (clutch, flywheel)
- propshaft
- engine wiring loom
- coolant pipes
- ECU (and either EWS delete or complete with EWS and key set)

To to forget you'd probably wanna upgrade the breaks, the diff. might be the wrong ratio, and the driveshafts will be much weaker/thinner.

If you got a breaker, it would be easy enough. If you were trying to source all the parts individually, I think you'd constantly find little bits that you overlooked.
 
Yes it has been done.

Here's some light reading for you!

J

Thread 'Jingles White 2.0i to 3.0Si conversion is FINALLY done!'

Hi all, not been very active on here as usually use the Facebook groups, but thought I would post in here as this is where I started and some of you might recognise my white E85

It started out as a alpine white 2.0i which was 1 of 51 E85s made in white in the UK. I always wanted more power but a manual 3.0Si never came up for sale in alpine white, and as it turns out it was because there was only ever 1 manual white E85 3.0Si made for the UK (as well as only 1 white Z4MR ever made for UK)

So after years of doing cosmetic mods it was finally time to pull the trigger and install the N52...
 
Going between engines that were both fitted to the same chassis is easily do-able as the parts will all work and be available. Probably the cheapest way to go about that is to buy a written off one and rob all the appropriate bits. For a 4 to 6 pot conversion most of the work needed is probably non-engine - springs/shocks, diffs & brakes.

I (equally hypothetically and more for the intellectual exercise) like the idea of putting in engines that were never fitted. So an N54 or a V8 etc into an E85. As far as I can tell, for a long time, BMW had very standardised ideas about mount points and commonality of parts. Look up many E46/E85 parts and they were in circulation since the E30/E34 era which makes half the fitting battle a lot easier. There was some conversion I read about many years ago (no idea what it was, so let's say a V8 into an E46) where all they had to do was go and find some E30 engine mounts to get it in the right place. Something like that anyway. Another one is oil pans; some engines get a different pan depending on what it was fitted to giving more options for clearances etc.

I noticed recently that retro-fitting the ZF 8-speed box into E53 X5s is a thing - that seemed something I would have thought very impractical. And someone breaking an E70 X5 40d (twin turbo) as they were fitting the engine & gearbox into a 1 series.
 
Well you might as well go big or go home. :LOL:

A long time ago someone on here fitted an S85 V10 from an M5 to a Z4.

S

Thread 'Newbie with a serious tuning disorder.'

Hi I've just bought a z4 3.0 SE and collect it at the weekend. It's been laid up for awhile but looking forward to putting some miles on it. It's black with black Motorsport leather seats, which sold it for me along with 18" alloys.
The reason I bought it is, tucked away I have a m5 v10 with 32k on it and a m3 v8 6speed gear box with 21k on it. These were bought awhile back for another project I was doing ( was dropping them into my Impreza) but realised the V10engine in another BMW model would be a simpler solution, hence the z4.
I know it's been done so I'm looking for as much...
 
smorris_12 said:
Going between engines that were both fitted to the same chassis is easily do-able as the parts will all work and be available. Probably the cheapest way to go about that is to buy a written off one and rob all the appropriate bits.
Click to expand...

I'd say the cheapest way to swap from an N46 to N52 would be to sell it and buy one that BMW fitted the N52 to in the first place :)
 
DevonPaul said:
I'd say the cheapest way to swap from an N46 to N52 would be to sell it and buy one that BMW fitted the N52 to in the first place :)
Click to expand...
It would be normally but Jingle made that swap because his E85 was Alpine White, and only two 3.0Si E85s that colour were registered in the UK so he'd probably still be waiting to find one!
 
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