Sorry to sound harsh, but I'd hate to see you go through all that work of disassembly, trying to take some shortcuts, going through all the reassembly just to start the engine and have some little oversite bite you in the butt and have the engine do to itself what happened to mine. Trust me, these motors are pretty strong and will last, it's just BMW cheaped out themselves in the wrong places...plastic guide rails? My situation was slightly different in that I bought the 7 used and the previous owner had overheated the engine, so the headgaskets were replaced. The shop did that the work failed to properly torque the guide down, so mine failed due to it falling off completely. Naturally none of this was discovered on the buyers inspection when I asked about the ticking noise the engine made, but it was such a deal and the car was in immaculate condition inside and out, so I took the chance. Not more than 3-4 weeks later and bam...that's all she wrote. Once my rebuilder tore the engine down is when I learned about what the PO had done, but thankfully my repairs, while expensive, got me into basically a brand new engine.

Thanks for your kind words. I was a little upset at first, but then when I got into researching the motor, I was actually kind of excited once I found the people who completely rebuilt mine since I was able to knock a lot of forced induction issues of the list with the sleeved block, camwork, etc. while the engine was apart. Granted I didn't have the car for about 3 months, but in the end, it was all worth it.

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