Well, it all started saturday when Denis (dude8383) said he needed me to drive to (friggin) Stamford, CT to help him pick something up...
We got back to my house in Long Island with this:

Note this is not a Ford Ranger M50 rear engine conversion project.... more pics:



Anyway, Denis decided he wanted to get low mileage M50 for like, $750, including ALL the accessories, the ECU, *and* a GM automatic transmission/giant paperweight.
Meanwhile, because *I* am not an ungrateful traitor, I recently picked up a non-running 1991 318i (sedan) that will become... the Guibo family truckster. Mrs. Guibo has agreed to learn how to drive stick, and since it's a white car... I'm doing a roller job on it this spring...



It's a nice car, not perfect, but for $700 (the armrest alone is worth $150) it means I can keep my cache of E30 parts and stay in the M42 game... whoever owned the car had some issue with the motor, and it was non running... otherwise it has a perfect non-sport interior, a 3.91 LSD and a couple of minor exterior dingys (dents, not rowboats)...
note, the muffler tip literally reads "The Fast and the Furious" or something...
So at the same time... I am glacially prepping a dome light restoration for the 1971 BMW 1600 I picked up:





don't subject your F5 key to excess wear looking for progress on this very rusty 1600... it's going to take a long long time...
Anyway, so the first step was pulling the non-running M42 out of the 4-door... this will give me a chance to wash down the engine bay and deal with some minor issues.
For an ungrateful traitor, Denis was instrumental in yanking the M42 out.



So, net net, big changes at the Guibo household... Long story short, I am basically trading cars with Denis, stuffing my Metric Mechanic engine (and as much E30 everything as I can) into the BMW 1600, putting denis' M42 into the white 318i... and... then parting out whatever odds and ends are left from Denis' old pink E30.
Denis will be stuffing a 1995 M50 into my Diamondschwartz E30 chassis.
A tough choice, but really, I need to focus on the 1600 (god willing, it will be a fairly balls-out, no-compromises build), and I need an M42 to drive in the interim.
Denis apparently feels that a 24-valve swap will help his online E30 cred or something... well, now's your big chance to let him know what a terrible mistake he's making!
