new to bmw

[papajoe]

I just bought my first bmw, it's a 92 318is, I don't know much if anything about these cars so my question is what is the engine, I know it's the 1.8 ltr four cyl. but that's it.

[xwill112x]

high revving, torque lacking, low maintenience( or atleast designed to be), and funnest non m-series motor there is to own.

[roundel318]

With some work, the car can be fun to drive, provided you maintain the car when it should be It was the first "modern" 4 cylinder BMW made, following the M10, the M40(which was never brought to the US in anything) and M42 needed no valve adjustments, had 16 valves and dual cams instead of the M10's 8 valves and single cam setup.
The stock M42 cams were pretty hot, as the 4500rpm engine range will tell you.
Perhaps the best budget upgrade is a firmware ROM chip for the ECU.
They are available from a variety of tuners, some slightly better than others, depending on your location, fuel availability, etc. One even frequents this board and has arguably one of the best chip's available for the M42 to boot!
Keep your oil changed when it should be, make sure its warmed up before you go blasting around
In terms of the "funnest non m-series motor" it's probably the most fun non-m 4 pot, the M60B40 was comparativly fun too. It even had a death problem from the factory, much like many M42's with their timing profile gasket. M60B40 and M60B30 V8's cylinder wall linings were nikasil originally and caused the big nikasil / alusil block thing for the 530/540/740/840 cars of the mid 90's.
Both were high revving (6k+ from the factory and would handle 7+ easy) timing chain, hydraulic valve, although the V8's were all aluminum and the M42 had an aluminum head only. The M42 4 pot is disadvantaged as it's pretty much half of the 540 motor Except when it comes time to fill it up, although the V8's consistantly pulled better mileage than their outgoing big six M30 3.5L bretheren, however this could be contributed somewhat to their taller rear ends and 5 speed automatic gearboxes.

Either way, just keep maintaining the car when it should be, I bought mine in 1999 with under 100k on the clock, it has 266k now and I have replaced a timing chain tensioner, spark plug wires, voltage regulator, valve cover gasket and recently some rubber hoses and the idle control valve. Other than that, just 1 clutch, brakes, lights, spark plugs, belts, other regular stuff that is expected to wear out.
Not bad for a 18 year old car