Rock Crawler Build - E53 3.0L

[downeaster1]

Greetings All,
I'm fairly new to xoutpost, but am a long time veteran of Bimmerforums. I work at a dealership in MD and we got an E53 on trade in a few months ago. I picked it up dirt cheap as a beater and decided to start building it up as a luxo-rock crawler.

Now, I can't tell you how many times I've seen people say "its not an off-road vehicle". This I am well aware of (in fact, i believe it says not to take it off road in the owners manual even). My figure is that E36's arn't supposed to be swapped with LS1's, but people do it anyway, so why the heck not.

I'll take some pictures soon, but I'm busy moving to a house at the moment from my crappy apartment.

So far I've retrofitted a european dual oil pickup and beefed up suspension components. I have a front and rear undercage on order (to protect engine/VTG components and rear diff, etc). Next on the list is to finish the water proofing at the bottom of the engine compartment and to set up the roof lights and snorkel.

I am sorry for the purists who may not agree, but it should be one hell of a ride when complete.

EDIT:
Pictures:




On the right: