Can I get a quick rundown on this guy?

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Please don't stop putting up with the aggressive shitposting here, and continue sharing your knowledge.

Please tell me about the n52 and the possibility of turboing it

You should forget about that turd and look into a Camry Sport model with 290hp unless you really want a pretty but unreliable piece of junk.

Not him, but I picked up a 12 year old E90 with 90k on the clock.

Everything seems in great condition. All in order.

Starting to read those horror stories of people who had something big go and wondering about preventative maintenance. Apparently the water pump is a common one?

Gonna have a google and read the service history in more detail.

Get from my E46 last night

I've seen them get down into the 2500s with really serious weight reduction and a time attack cage. (Which has less side impact protection and sometimes thinner tubing.) We once got one into the 2400s, but that was with a rollbar and not a real cage. You're talking about stuff like fiberglass/CF for every removable panel, hacking out every bracket or bit of unnecessary structure, lexan windows, etc. at that point though.

Perfectly maintained and close to stock I see no reason they wouldn't pretty much run forever. I've never seen one die of old age.

Haha, the shitposting makes me come and go in spurts, but I never seem to be able to leave for that long. Been here too many years, and the anonymity is nice when posting anywhere else means having my company attached to anything I say.

N52 stuff is unfortunately out of my wheelhouse, I've only ever worked on a couple of non-Ms and it wasn't engine stuff. (They were NASA GTS cars and we did cages and suspension work.) My gut says that turboing one right would cost more than selling the car and buying an M or 335 or whatever.

E90 M or non-M? With the Ms, the problem isn't so much that the water pump fails as that the whole cooling system is a bit underspec.

I have to admit that I know E90/92s a bit less well than E36s and 46s, I left my BMW job around 2 years ago and E9xs were still expensive enough that not many people were using them as track toys. I know the car pretty well from an engineering standpoint, thanks to tearing our race car down and rebuilding it from scratch, but that's not a big sample size for reliability issues etc.

I think the M3 E46 GTR is the best car BWM has ever made

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I can't give you a rundown but I'm sure the car can give you a brokedown