Sovereign Z Posted July 15, 2015 Share Posted July 15, 2015 BMW motor would be great, but not the S50/52 due to the cost of them. I would go M50/M52 turbo. lots of them making over 400HP by the time you piece together the turbo kit, you'd have spent more than the price of an S52. but if you're going to turbo it i can see how this makes sense. Because the OP wants to race, i would suggest N/A. instant response, less parts to fail or a supercharger. the bmw motors respond well to this. i know a properly tuned and matched turbo system can have boost as low as 2500rpm or lower. however for the add'l cost. kinda seems prohibitive for only 300hp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goob_os101 Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 A used S52 can be had for around $2000...sure but I would not throw a used S52 in my car. I had a 99 ///M3 and had the head rebuild and that was a cheap bill to pay! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktm Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 I agree, if you're spending 10K on most swaps, you're doing it wrong, or paying for someone else to do it and probably buying all new parts/crate engine. I'm not sure I've ever spent more than about $2K on a swap, including the engine, maybe $2.5K. That is of course, myself performing all labour, and I usually use less mainsteam engines, so they will cost less than the "it" engines. Uh, LSx requires $4k just for the engine and transmission......I did my own swap and still clocked in at $10k+. I think all of you are just spouting numbers without actually doing anything yourselves. Core LSx swap items: Engine + trans: $4k+ JCI Kit: $600 JTR Headers: $500 HP Tuners or send out PCM: $300 to $500 Fueling (if on a 240z and doing it half-way right): $500 Electrical: $500+ (240z's aren't wired for EFI) Electrical fan and accessories: $150 That totals up to $6,600 and I am not talking about the total cost of the swap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Six_Shooter Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 Ktm, I do all of my own work, always have. Also where did I say anything about LSx? I didn't. On top of that if i spent more than about $3k installing an LSx in my car, I'd very disappointed. I'll never install an LSx in any of my cars though, there are better engines for less money, they just have less cylinders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktm Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) You did say, and I quote, "most swaps". Last I checked, an LSx may fall under that. See, you can't spend less than the cost of the motor and transmission regardless of your skills unless you bought a parts car and sold off the unused pieces. That is an immutable fact. If the engine and transmission cost you $3000, that is the minimum you'll spend. But there are other pieces that need to be purchased: mounting kits or buying the steel to fabricate your own, headers, intakes, possibly turbo upgrades, exhaust (again, unless you are buying the pipes and welding your own), electrical, etc., etc. All of these add up very quick. They add up even quicker if you want to do it right the first time, and by that I mean you buy new parts and are not junkyard diving (which I used to do myself). Let's talk about an L28ET swap. The engine and transmission is a bolt in, you've got that going for you. Let's say you can find a good engine and transmission for $1,000. Yes, there are cheaper ones, but you may be into rebuild territory with them and that negates any savings you think you had. Now comes the other components. Stock turbo or upgrade to at least a T03/04? If upgrading, there goes $600. Fuel injectors? $300 if going for safe power. Engine management? Say Megasquirt - another $600. If you've upgraded your turbo, you'll need a new downpipe along with your exaust. $600 Intercooler, piping and silicone couplers. I am being nice at $200 Electric fan? $100 Fuel pump $120 (Walbro) Associated fuel fittings $150 I could keep going, but I hope I illustrated my point. Some people may suffer from Greek accounting (not saying that you do) and simply refuse to recognize all of the costs for a swap, even if they think they are doing it on the cheap. Edited July 17, 2015 by ktm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Six_Shooter Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) You did say, and I quote, "most swaps". Last I checked, an LSx may fall under that. See, you can't spend less than the cost of the motor and transmission regardless of your skills unless you bought a parts car and sold off the unused pieces. That is an immutable fact. If the engine and transmission cost you $3000, that is the minimum you'll spend. But there are other pieces that need to be purchased: mounting kits or buying the steel to fabricate your own, headers, intakes, possibly turbo upgrades, exhaust (again, unless you are buying the pipes and welding your own), electrical, etc., etc. All of these add up very quick. They add up even quicker if you want to do it right the first time, and by that I mean you buy new parts and are not junkyard diving (which I used to do myself). Let's talk about an L28ET swap. The engine and transmission is a bolt in, you've got that going for you. Let's say you can find a good engine and transmission for $1,000. Yes, there are cheaper ones, but you may be into rebuild territory with them and that negates any savings you think you had. Now comes the other components. Stock turbo or upgrade to at least a T03/04? If upgrading, there goes $600. Fuel injectors? $300 if going for safe power. Engine management? Say Megasquirt - another $600. If you've upgraded your turbo, you'll need a new downpipe along with your exaust. $600 Intercooler, piping and silicone couplers. I am being nice at $200 Electric fan? $100 Fuel pump $120 (Walbro) Associated fuel fittings $150 I could keep going, but I hope I illustrated my point. Some people may suffer from Greek accounting (not saying that you do) and simply refuse to recognize all of the costs for a swap, even if they think they are doing it on the cheap. See this is where you and I differ. I've never spent $3000 on an engine and transmission, because I shop around. I can get LSxs and (auto) trans (4L60E) around here all day for usually less than $1000 (CDN) (4.8/5.3 truck engines), if I wanted to go that route, which I never will. Some of those engines and transmissions even come with the ECM and harness. If I spend more than $2000 on making mounts and the EFI and fuel system to work with it, then I'm doing something VERY wrong. I don't buy race car parts for my street cars, I buy street car parts and most of the time they are either junk yard parts or (new) stock replacement parts, because I put a lot of thought into how I do things, not just throw money at it. Also when I turbocharged my L28 (about 8 years ago), I spent less than $1100 (CDN) on the FULL conversion (N/A carbed L28 to turbo/EFI), IIRC, since I got some parts cheap and I sourced out other parts cheap. Some were used, some were new. Just because I did it cheap, doesn't mean it was wrong, it just means I know where to spend the money. I used GM EFI, since it's great, made my own fuel lines, bought a Walbro from a cheaper retailer (still in the car and still working well), made my own harness, built my own exhaust from 3" mandrel bends (probably the most expensive part), modified a stock intake manifold from a '77 or '78 280Z, used a stock L28ET exhaust manifold. The set up worked extremely well for me for about 7 years, then decided to finally swap to the drivetrain I had planned to install before buying the car, which if I figure in the cost of the previously bought and used parts from the turbo L28, is still under $2500, but has since risen to about $3000 with a few upgrades I have done since, which are about what some ARP fasteners cost me when I decided I wanted to upgrade when I replaced a head gasket (head gasket failure was my fault for pushing timing too high with too low of an octane fuel, because I was testing limits, no fault of the engine or the components to run the engine). So as you can see, there's more than one way to skin and engine swap, those that simply throw money at the swap, and those that know exactly what they need, and only buy those parts. Edited July 17, 2015 by Six_Shooter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktm Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 You did not do a swap though. Engine. Swap. Slapping a turbo on an existing engine is not a swap. The 4.8/5.3 are not LSx. An LSx is aluminum block (the 4.8 and 5.3 are iron block) 5.7 litre. I can buy 4.8/5.3s for less than $1000 US. Go price yourself a TRUE LSx and let me know where it falls...... So, sounds like you are saying that people like me throw money at something and hope we bought the right parts, When, in reality, we plan our builds, KNOW what we want to buy, have the money to buy said parts, and then execute.. Sounds like you forget that I had a nice L28ET before the LSx, and an L24 before the L28ET. I understand more about swaps than you give me credit for. Can swaps be done inexpensively? Most certainly, if you have the time, patience, inclination, skill and a bit of luck (for finding the parts inexpensively). Removing an L24 and installing an L28 is easily the least expensive swap (see, engine was removed) of them all. An L28ET would be next if keeping it stock. Once you start talking about other engines that are no longer direct bolt-ins you are adding considerable cost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Six_Shooter Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) You did not do a swap though. Engine. Swap. Slapping a turbo on an existing engine is not a swap. The 4.8/5.3 are not LSx. An LSx is aluminum block (the 4.8 and 5.3 are iron block) 5.7 litre. I can buy 4.8/5.3s for less than $1000 US. Go price yourself a TRUE LSx and let me know where it falls...... So, sounds like you are saying that people like me throw money at something and hope we bought the right parts, When, in reality, we plan our builds, KNOW what we want to buy, have the money to buy said parts, and then execute.. Sounds like you forget that I had a nice L28ET before the LSx, and an L24 before the L28ET. I understand more about swaps than you give me credit for. Can swaps be done inexpensively? Most certainly, if you have the time, patience, inclination, skill and a bit of luck (for finding the parts inexpensively). Removing an L24 and installing an L28 is easily the least expensive swap (see, engine was removed) of them all. An L28ET would be next if keeping it stock. Once you start talking about other engines that are no longer direct bolt-ins you are adding considerable cost. *sigh*, my turbo L28 was not the current swap I was talking about, please read for detail. My current swap is a GM LX9 (3.5L V6) that is mated to a Nissan 300ZX TT trans, and a bunch of other parts all put together that were never intended to be, but no, I didn't do a swap. FWIW, I believe I'm the only person to swap this engine into an S30, and so therefore I had to pave my own way and was not able to buy mounts, or even follow what someone else had done. I simply mentioned my personal turbo L28 experience because you mention a turbo L28 swap. The only difference between the two is that I didn't buy an engine when doing the swap I used the L28 that had already been swapped into my car before I got it. The rest of the turbocharging and EFI upgrade applies, because they are all parts that would have been needed regardless. I'm not going to get into the LS debate, they are not the god's gift to hot rodding that people want to believe they are, and anything that has that engine design in the circles I run in fall under the "LSx" name sake. The truck engines also seem to be the most popular engines to swap, since they are cheaper than the Car LSx engines, for whatever reason people want to pay more for the car versions... Yes, most people that swap engines anymore follow other people's recipes, throwing money at them and hope they are buying the right parts, I see very few people doing otherwise and therefore they seem to spend a lot more than they need to. It's not my money, but I see people buying parts that they REALLy don't need, because someone else bought that part for their swap. Most of the time they are "performance" parts that don't work any better for their applications than a properly selected OEM part, and in fact many times I see them give the owner troubles, because they were not intended to be used on street cars in many cases. Do as you wish, it's your money, but but people seem to lie to themselves about the actual purpose of their cars and therefore overspend on parts they really don't need. I haven't mentioned the numerous other swaps and builds that I have done over the years in my own and other people's vehicles and not one that I can recall was any where near $10k, for the swap, as in get a different engine in and running reliably with basic engine purchase. I'm not going to include the prices of engine (re)builds because those can vary so widely depending on what the owner/builder wants to do. But a basic engine purchase and get it in and running reliably can be done for far less than what I see most people spend on them, when the right parts are chosen for the purpose of use and not just because the parts are the "in" parts to use. Forget you had certain engines? Son, I don't follow anyone around and remember what engines they have in their cars, so there's no forgetting here, there's a lot of not caring what you may have had previously, but to say that most engine swaps cost $10K plus is a logical fallacy in my eyes. I'm also not saying that engine swaps don't cost that much and more, because they can, but they don't need to for the average swapper. Edited July 17, 2015 by Six_Shooter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
makaofox Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Guys, guys stop fighting T_T the PO is going to pick an engine and leave this thread unfinished anyway! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rturbo 930 Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) The truck engines also seem to be the most popular engines to swap, since they are cheaper than the Car LSx engines, for whatever reason people want to pay more for the car versions... Because the car engines are all aluminum, easy to find vs the few Al. truck motors, and about 100lbs lighter. If you're watching your weight, that's worth paying for. Edited July 17, 2015 by rturbo 930 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NewZed Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 Posts that begin with "sigh" are almost always irritating to read. It's so hard being superior... Just realized I'd seen that "sigh" before . Six Shooter is the only guy that knows how to tune a GM Engine Management system correctly. It's easy. Or rather, it would have been if he'd finished. Weird how things repeat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedarkie Posted July 19, 2015 Share Posted July 19, 2015 (edited) I'm not going to get into the LS debate, they are not the god's gift to hot rodding that people want to believe they are, and anything that has that engine design in the circles I run in fall under the "LSx" name sake. The truck engines also seem to be the most popular engines to swap, since they are cheaper than the Car LSx engines, for whatever reason people want to pay more for the car versions... I beg to differ. The LSX is absolutely god's gift to 'hot rodding'...its hard to find a cheaper, lighter, more reliable or simpler motor with that kind of power output capability. There's a reason everyone and their mother uses LSx engines in all kinds of swaps, it's a really good package. It's small and relatively easy to shoehorn into all kinds of engine bays, and you can buy parts anywhere for them. I swear I saw a pair of LSx heads next to the chocolate bars in my local Shell gas station lol Edited July 19, 2015 by thedarkie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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