Finding a recipient car was daunting. I was looking for a clean title with low miles, sport seats, AHLs, and minimal rust. I didn’t care about color or 128i vs 135i since everything was going to get swapped anyways and I was planning to paint the car valencia orange. I didn’t want to deal with mileage being off on the title or monkeying around the cluster so I preferred one with less miles than the donor.
I kept leaning towards a 128i since they were cheaper, but depending on spec a 135i might be more economical since you would net more after parting it out. Sure enough, I ended up with a 135i. I found the car on eBay after the auction had complete but reserve was not met. I called the dealer the next morning and we squared everything away. Upon receiving the car, I felt bad doing the swap. The car was very clean and looked after! It was M-sport, had JB4, downpipes, intakes, catch can, performance exhaust, performance side skirts, FMIC, blow off valves, and the 1M replica front bumper. It sounded great and despite needing new turbos, felt healthy.
While I was dealing with insurance and doing maintenance on the S65, I started posting parts up for sale. I told myself that as soon as someone buys the drivetrain, I will start working on it. If not, I would buy replacement turbos and keep the car. Sure enough someone bought the drivetrain since I was selling everything for cheap. How cheap? I sold the full drivetrain (motors, trans, diff) and subframes for $1200. Despite that people still tried to nickel and dime..oh well. Took me 5 days to remove the drivetrain and move it out.
Over the next 2 weeks it was more of the same as before. Taking a ton of photos, removing all wires and sensors, and tagging them in the process. The recipient car was from New York some bolts proved to be stubborn but only a handful stripped or broken; none that threaded into the actual car. Additionally, similar to the E93, the brake lines were seized again and broke..FML! At this point I still didn’t know how I was going to perform the swap. I will get to that one of the next posts, but you can either run the brake lines the same way as the E93 or run them in a similar fashion to the E82. Given that I stripped both, I was f’d either way and had to solution. I was more diligent in taking the E82 apart overall. Taking both of the cars apart back to back, the overlap in build and architecture was clear as day and made things easier the second time around. Lastly, it gave me confidence that maybe I could pull this off and not be out a good chunk of change.
Side note, dealing with insurance and car carries is a nightmare. The estimate for the damage on the front bumper was $1300 and the deductible for the carrier was $2500. This meant that the carrier would be going out of pocket. The carrier was located in NC while I’m in VA so short of going to court I had to recourse to recover my losses. I ended up putting a stop payment on the check for the car transport so recoup some of the money, but it’s annoying nonetheless.
Timeline:
9/27 – Recipient car received
10/14 – Recipient car disassembly starts
10/19 – N54 Drivetrain sold
11/3 – Recipient car disassembly complete
