Iceddragon

just get a used motor. It's gonna cost you $1500 in parts to do a full rebuild which is the only acceptable answer if you are tearing down the engine in the first place. You're not just gonna replace 1 ring or 1 piston. You're gonna do a complete overhaul including pistons. Then you need to make sure you do it right, and whether or not you did it right becomes far more obvious when you're making +350 whp/tq over factory power. So you'll be spending a lot of time here. The engine has too many miles on it to NOT overhaul everything if you tear it down. 
you need to pull the motor regardless, so factoring in what your time is worth, you'll have a lot of hours into a teardown/rebuild on top of pulling/reinstalling the motor. Considering a used motor with less than half the miles on your current engine can be had for $3k and it's a straight swap, I wouldn't even be considering a rebuild. N54 motors are a commodity. When you grenade one, you just go get a used one and replace it. That's just what you do. This isn't an old M50 or something where finding good used examples is hard to do and you have to be more serious about rebuilding (plus parts are way cheaper for those anyway). I can throw a rock out the window and hit 5 n54 motors on the used market within walking distance of my bathroom all with 50k miles on them. 

Yes there is. i dont care what you are in. Show up. It will be a good time regardless.

Hmmmm well ahhh.... so I got this car with a lot of goodies on it. It is not a Bmw and it just weighs to much and these parts need to go into something else. If you don't know what car I am talking about it is a 2003 s55. 
The bases of the car is going to be a track car, but not full retard still be able to drive on the street and take to cruises and car shows. I don't know what chassis or car this is all going into yet. I'm leaning towards e30 or e36. Any ideas of cars I'm open too them.
I have a lead on a e36 318i 5 speed four door with 60,000 miles on it just needs touch up paint and w/s. price is under 3k. I want something with zero rust.
So what am I going to be using? The engine and transmission. For all you butt hurts it's an automatic with paddle shifting. It's going to be a lot easier this way for the swap. Mb down the line it will get a manual but that will require a standalone ecu for the engine to cope with the trans computer missing. Also a manual trans that can handle this power will be $$$. Or the other option would be blow it and replace it with ZFs all day for pennys? Almost forgot the engine may go in the middle of the car literally, in order.. engine, trans, diff. No drive shaft. Sadly I don't think there is enough room. A mid engine trans is just not in the budget, always open to ideas.
Suspension... well I will probably do the engine swap and get that completed. But the ultimate goal is to incorporate the hydraulic suspension into the car. If this means tube frame for suspension it will get it. Which means lots of caster and struts diagonally. If you do not know what Mercedes abc suspension is I would highly recommend researching it.
Using the suspension means I will be using the control arms hubs and the big brakes. 
Yes this is not an overnight process. The engine swap is the easy part that will only take a month if that.
it will get the Mercedes cluster cut out to look stock. The goal is to have no cel which is very possible with the Mercedes ecu as you can code anything out with it. 
The plan is not set in stone if someone else has a better idea let me know. This is in dream phase so help me make this crazy.

The further you get away from Facebook, the better the car culture/ads/etc becomes

I should I have a buyer for the E90. I hope I'm not making a mistake though, I love it so much. 
I think I decided on a 135i, seems like the clean enthusiast owned ones are just a tad cheaper than equivalent E92 335s and much easier to find than a clean E46 M3 for a decent price.

Here are a few local options 2 of them have 112-115k miles other 2 are lower.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Mnbmwclassifieds/permalink/727591930756217/?sale_post_id=727591930756217
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wcecforsale/permalink/1980399565563294/?sale_post_id=1980399565563294
https://appleton.craigslist.org/cto/d/2009-bmw-135i-6-speed-price/6206431661.html
https://madison.craigslist.org/cto/d/2011-bmw-135i-sport-manual/6215665058.html
 

I should I have a buyer for the E90. I hope I'm not making a mistake though, I love it so much. 
I think I decided on a 135i, seems like the clean enthusiast owned ones are just a tad cheaper than equivalent E92 335s and much easier to find than a clean E46 M3 for a decent price.

Hey guys,
First weekend of the month is this weekend!  That means the Lake Mills Cars and Coffee will be held on 8/6.  If you haven't been recently, it's grown considerably over the past few years and now routinely holds 400+ cars.  We have been meeting at the east side JCPenny's parking lot and cruising down with a group - some of the more modified guys drive down a bit more "spiritedly" but don't feel like you have to be aggressive, come to cruise, and have some fun with us.  We typically meet early and try to get out of JCPenny's between 7:15 and 7:30am.
So far it's my E60 M5, an F10 M5, a very modified 135I, GT-R, 911, Terminator Mustang, a blown Z06, and some mustangs/chargers with prochargers on them.  Fun group - who can make it?

https://m.nettiauto.com/bmw/635/8996293    damn it <3

Yes NTK. 
The key to nice wrinkle paint is using an oven. Makes it look like I know what Im doing.

I'm in La Crosse on Hwy 35, its a beautiful road and somewhat twisty but essentially just a highway. We wouldn't be able to have much twisty or fast fun, but it would be a great casual cruise.

I'm in La Crosse on Hwy 35, its a beautiful road and somewhat twisty but essentially just a highway. We wouldn't be able to have much twisty or fast fun, but it would be a great casual cruise.

I'm oncall at work that day but I will see if someone can trade with me, I'll try my best to make this since its only a two hour drive instead of the usual 4 for me.

I'm oncall at work that day but I will see if someone can trade with me, I'll try my best to make this since its only a two hour drive instead of the usual 4 for me.

Glad to hear you guys think you will make it, hopefully some of the lurkers turn out as well (Dmitry, i'm mainly referring you [emoji14])
Look forward to an updated route map and details this weekend

I blame the american companys for wood paneling and the now, very large, lack of taste towards wagons. I think its very well the same reason soccer moms now drive gas guzzling SUV's with no intentions of taking them off road besides driving over you and your car when they are too busy on their cell phones or yelling at the kids in the back seat. * sorry end of rant*

Ill add some pictures of the bimmer this week, but for now ill just post my old cars. Evo went through a lot of transformations, but i never did find anything i was satisfied with except the color. Eg had a low compression gsr built motor, ferrea goodies in the head, and a b16 trans. Evo had gt3076r turbo and the whole 9 yards. No transmission upgrades except the exedy twin disk and restacked my rear diff.
 

Hi guys, Im new here as well. I came from a gsr 93 civic si (built motor for turbo, never turboed), to a 03 BBY Evo 8 (Gt3076r, flex fuel, supporting mods, FBO, etc), to now an 08 montego blue e90 335xi. Im all about AWD TURBO CARS because i drive my cars all year round. Originally from Milwaukee and now i'm living in lacrosse, WI. Just wanted to say hi to anyone that lives in lacrosse and hopefully we can all have a wibimmers meet someday. Future plans for the car is just to have reliability for now. I've done most of my 100k maintenance except the valve cover gasket. I will be doing the RB external pcv set up for next month. Maybe in a year or two, I can upgrade to a bigger twin or medium to big ST turbo set up and full e85. Thanks for having me. 

335i's break and frequently.  Modding them only makes them less reliable and things like coil packs become regular maintenance.  If you aren't capable of fixing these cars yourself then they can become pricey quick.  Now, yes, you can easily have more whp than an m3 but make no mistakes, it's no M car.  I love my car as a daily and the blast of speed is fun but on the track I know an M car would serve me better.  There's also a lack of that visceral feel that you get from an M.  What is fun is that it's not an M and people are usually clueless that a normal looking sedan is as quick as it is then you get the slight joy of telling them it's not an M, but then again you also have to constantly explain what it is and why it's fast.
What scares me about the car you're looking at is it's $11k and modded which makes me assume it's a higher mileage car (over 80k).  That and it's modded with a warranty.  Modded and warranty contradict each other unless you can turn the car back to stock when stuff breaks.  Maybe this warranty company doesn't care but i'd be cautious.  I'm also curious what kind of regular fail items have been replaced such as turbo's, injectors, water pump, hpfp, walnut blast, etc.
The auto is generally good as long as it has a dinan or alpina flash.  If not it's fucking miserable.  I have talked to a lot of people with auto's and they like them a lot with the flash but more often than not i'm told "I wish I bought a manual".  Your power goal is easily attainable and handled just as well by an auto or manual.
Do you have any links to the car your considering?

The 335i is simply amazing for a street car. Sure it doesn't have an LSD, the stock tires are runflats, it has its share of issues that other cars dont have, but it is an amazing car. Making the assumption that you have $17k to go towards the car, I'd either keep $2000 set aside for an "N54 surprise buttsecks" fund, or purchase an extended warranty. The extended warranty on my FIL's 2007 already came in handy at 42k for the water pump failure.

Every car is going to break or require maintenance, its important that the car is worth sinking money into. In my mind a 335i definitely is.
Dont be afraid of the automatic in the 335i either. With the Dinan trans tune it is a fast-shifting and sporty transmission that is so direct, it actually feels a lot like a dual clutch trans.

Hi all, I'm back again with more indecisiveness.
First a little context before I ask more questions;
Last year when I bought the 330, I purposely avoided all 335's because of the reliability issues. But last month when the E90 broke, I ended up buying a Honda for the wife. That thing won't break anytime soon, so I don't have to worry so much about my only car exploding on me.
Now, I have a budget set to spend around 17k on a car by the end of the year (including selling mine). My thought had been on an E46 M3, but recently I have fallen madly in love with my car again, it's just a little....slow. So I got to thinking about 335's. 
In my head, I can get a clean 335 for less than an M3, and it will have more power. The question is, should I?
I have someone that offered me a 335i that already has all the mods I would want and a warranty until 2019, for less than 11k. The car is loaded and even has the M Sport package, the only problems are its far away from me and its another automatic (I finally learned to drive stick and had my heart set on getting a manual car). I'm not sure I can pass this up, but I've been thinking about this so much over the last week that I need some words of wisdom from the experts. *cough* @patsbimmer1
As a bonus you get a professional picture of my car and a picture I took of it with my friends Datsun.

Yessir, the maximum rpm is limited with respect to engine temperature. Im not sure if its coolant or oil temp dependent but its neat that its displayed on the tach

Finally got my car back (it was the water pump after all) and had some fun with it this weekend. I told myself I was going to be gentle for a while, but damn I missed driving it.