Turbo 6-Series Project Brings the Crazy by the Bucketload

Doing a crazy wheelie, PAH!
Doing a crazy wheelie, PAH!

The good news is, for the $4995 asking price, the seller throws in a 2-ton engine hoist. The bad news is pretty much everything else. This project is the automotive equivalent of getting a whole foil-tray worth of leftover pasta from the company lunchroom on your way out the door at 6:30pm. So much food! So much potential for gastrointestinal distress! Let’s get into it after the jump…
The premise is a good one: take a turbo I-6 out of am e23 745i and drop it into an e24 635. The 6-er is even a desirable Euro gray market car, complete with tiny bumpers and certifications from the Bureau of Automotive repair.
It goes downhill from there. A victim of Overambitious Project Car Synrome, three years ago the seller pulled the motor from what was a running 635 in hopes of swapping in the turbo M102 from a 745, but it’s been sitting in pieces ever since. The years have not been kind to the 6-er, which has acquired that “sitting in the side-yard” layer of dust, cobwebs, wheelbarrow dents and oxidation that’s hard to shake.
We get a pile of pictures of miscellaneous parts, which in fairness, might just need to be assembled into the car to finish the job. Unfortunately, my optimism for a given Craigslist project goes down 10% with every line of ALLCAPSTEXT past 3, giving an optimism score of -3300% in this case.
That said, we still encourage all of you to give “Jamin” a call and prove us wrong!
Craigslist

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  1. Alff Avatar

    Perhaps mercifully, the pictures in the ad wouldn't load so those above will have to suffice. What I see in that box o' parts is enough to make me turn the other way. What are the odds that there's less congealed crap on the inside of that fuel rail than on the outside? I'd say slim to none.
    Surely that oil cooler (it couldn't possibly be an intercooler, could it?!) works much better, now that it's been brush painted with POR-15.

  2. P161911 Avatar

    IF you could get this thing running you would have a 250HPish car. Why in the world wouldn't you just drop in an S52 or something newer? It would be a whole lot cheaper and easier. Move the decimal one place to the left and we can talk. A non-running 635 with a bad body and interior is worth less than $500. You can pick up an S52 for less than $3000 with all the goodies and it wouldn't cost that much to get another 10HP. Or just forget the whole BMW I-6 thing and drop in an LS-1.

  3. joshuman Avatar

    The seller would be better off parting it out and selling the hoist by itself.

    1. JeepyJayhawk Avatar

      I think the hoist came from harbor freight

  4. blueplate Avatar

    Oh, geez. "Over-ambitious" is right. Not only has this seller destroyed all the coolness of the "745i that's really a Turbo I-6 and definitely not a 4.5L V-8" motor by leaving parts strewn in cardboard boxes, no doubt never to function again, but there are so many ways you could spend $4995 on a 1980s BMW.
    Like, maybe an E28 5-series (let's say an M535i or, what the heck, an M5) in apparent perfectly-running condition, just ready to let you fork over hard-earned money in a greasy stack of fifties and hundreds, drive it halfway across the country before things start to go wrong and activating the total vacuuming of your wallet and sanity.
    Errr, just saying. (BTW, Movember Mo'stache activated .. check the gravatar.)

  5. CptSevere Avatar

    A gutted rotting car and a pile of junk parts. Oh, sure, I'd give five grand to take this idiot's nightmare off of his hands. Sure thing. I'm just made of money and have all the patience in the world. Gimme a break.