Update on the previous update on project Chicago, Alpina B7 (Patreon)

I wanna express my biggest gratitude to all of you for joining Patreon and kindly supporting me, the channel, and the projects! Thank you, thank you!

Newest Alpina update -- on the last update I told you I'm going with a brand new block. Well, change of plans.

My correspondence with Alpina has been abysmal. First it took them over a week to tell me the price for a new block and the guy told me 4.250€ over the phone, but forgot to mention that's without tax. With tax, it's 5.000€ like I initially said.

Then I ended up emailing their head of production who just skimmed through my emails and read what he wanted to read. All I wanted to know is if they could offer me a bit better price on the parts since I'll be ordering a lot of them. He thought I was located in the US and after few pointless emails he got back to me with this:

"Than you have the possibility to dismount the engine through your BMW dealer, send it to us for investigation: We will strip it comletely down, check all the parts, make a cost estimate and repair it as soon as we get the OK from you."

After I said again I just want to buy the parts, I got this snotty answer:

"OK, I understand, but this is not the way we think a BMW ALPINA should be repaired. Thats why we normally overhaul engines in our engine department.

Of course you can by parts. This is up to you.

But we can not offer a better price - these parts prices are fixed."

This annoyed me and made me chuckle at the same time. The guy is preaching to me how to repair a 14-year-old car that was poorly designed in the first place and self-destructs over time. In case you are curious, their engine overhaul service is 25k, whole car is worth maybe 15-20k when running.

Funnily enough, a subscriber that works for a BMW branch is able to offer me a better price for the same parts that they are getting directly from Alpina.

I didn't expect special treatment, but at least some respect towards someone who is trying to save one of their shitty cars and not condescending behavior.

Anyway, putting that behind us, the math for new parts comes down to this:

5.067€ for the block
380€ per piston which you are required to buy with a new block
= new block & 8 pistons = 8.107€.

$9191 or £6816 for essentially 2 components and then we have several thousands more on other parts to complete the engine rebuild and then there's the rest of the car. It just wouldn't make financial sense to fix it this way as it would exceed the value of the car by a lot. So new block is sadly out of the equation.

3 guys in Germany told me they could perhaps hone the block if the scratches aren't too deep. I took the block to one of them and they are too deep. He said we could try, but no guarantees and likely wouldn't be long-lasting, as I suspected in the first place. Hoovie tried to hone his and it failed almost instantly.

That leaves us with the last and best option to repair Alusil block - sleeves.

Here you can read more about sleeves if you are interested - https://www.vacmotorsports.com/news/are-cylinder-sleeves-bad-for-your-bmw-engine-1483338393.html

How it works in short: you bore out the cylinders (make holes bigger) and then you insert steel sleeves that have exact bore dimensions as the original Alusil bore.

This is, naturally, very difficult to do and requires skills and precision, but once done properly the block is actually much stronger and durable than Alusil. This is very popular for drift and race engines.

I talked to more people than I want to count about this, in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic... and the best quote I found in Germany is 3.200€ to sleeve the block. The guy has the knowledge and skill, but he's never done N62 engine before so I'm unsure whether the work would be done successfully.

So how are we going to fix this thing? I ended up talking to a friend back home in Serbia, he had his E39 M5 S62 engine sleeved there 6 years ago. He covered 40.000 km since then and the engine is still perfect.

He put me in touch with the specialist who did the work and I talked to the guy for like 30 minutes and he explained everything in detail and I liked everything I heard. The first 4 pictures are from the S62 engine that he's done for my friend. That engine is even more difficult to sleeve because the walls between the cylinders are much thinner than on N62. Other pictures are also his work.

He successfully sleeved 5 N62 engines, 10 N63 engines, around 20 M62 engines and a ton of Porsche Alusil engines, Audi's, drift engines and so on.

I don't trust people easily so I did further checking on him and I called one of the biggest BMW independent shops in Serbia and they told me that they send all of their blocks to this guy to sleeve them and never had any issues. That was great to hear and further validates his work.

So I think we found our solution! His name is Nenad and he's basically a one-man show with a couple of workers, but when it comes to this difficult precise work, he does that himself. I'm also in direct touch with him, no middle man.

And now the best part, the cost. The labor in Serbia is just stupid cheap and to sleeve and resurface the block will cost me a whopping 600€! He's also going to refurb both heads and the cost is 100€ per head.

In comparison, to have the block and heads done by the aforementioned guy in Germany, it would cost between 4.000 and 5.000€, while this way it'll cost me 800€ plus shipping which is 300 to 500€ both ways.

A huge difference that will leave room to renew many other parts of the engine and most importantly the work will be done by someone who has experience with this particular block.

I'm sending him the block, both heads, crankshaft (which can be easily polished) and all pistons. He'll check and measure all pistons and if still within spec, I can reuse them with new pistons rings. He needs 2 weeks to complete the work upon receiving parts.

I think this is fantastic news, it's a great cost-effective way to fix the Alpina without going bankrupt and need to sell the E30. On top of that, we'll end up with an engine that's much stronger than the original Alusil and can take a proper beating.

Through my research and talking to people, I learned that scored cylinders are a quite common occurrence on Alpina N62/H1 engine. They are simply fragile engines. One guy in Germany also had his block sleeved, another replaced it with a used one and another subscriber from the UK had his rebuilt with brand new parts and the cost was £17k which is just absurd.

Anyway, now I need to strip the heads and prepare everything for shipping. Thankfully, there are transport companies that drive from Frankfurt to Serbia all the time so shipping won't be a problem.
I'm estimating it will probably take a month before I get the parts back and everything ready for reassembly. I honestly can't wait!

I'll keep you posted on the progress, but the Alpina will live again!

I was out of town for the past 5 days so I have some catching up to do, but there's more news. Incredibly nice Patreon and subscriber, Timo, reached out and offered me a free E39 528i Touring Individual! (last 2 pictures). I'm speechless and ecstatic at the same time cause I never had E39 Touring before and I always wanted one. The car needs some TLC and I'll be heading out to pick it up this week, it's around 3 and a half hours away from Frankfurt. I'm already loving that interior and looking forward to meeting Timo and the car.

That's all for now. Thank you again for your support and I love you all!