Hi Scotty,
I’ve got a 1991 BMW 3 series that I’ve been working on restoring and getting back to a comfortable daily driver sort of reliability. The car has about 195k miles on it. I am worried though about the lifespan of the engine after being more or less neglected for the last decade. I’ve considered rebuilding the motor or completely replacing it with another m20 motor or an m50 from the E36 generation.
At what point if I take a look at the motor should I say “it’s time to replace”? At what point is it still okay to just rebuild it?
Thanks and have a nice day.
Unless you have extensive experience rebuilding motors, I highly recommend replacing the engine with another one.
The general signs I can tell you (loss of compression, scuffed cylinder walls, broken or cracking piston rings, etc.) but without seeing the exact parts from the motor...its not something you can really tell someone "Yeah, that's toast."
I would save the headache and replace the motor.
