Call me nuts. I spent like x amount of time last night going back to 2016 when I started reading this thread to reacquaint myself with what was done to make the S38 physically fit and work in the car and get an idea of what other ancillary parts are there like the transmission, etc. I must have read 12-15 pages and honestly, with the [hold me closer,] tiny booster, that mod made to the bell-crank for a throttle cable and whatnot, there's really no reason you couldn't get a B35 and just drop it in there and call it done. Yeah, I previously said there's a bunch of stuff needed to make it work, but there's no reason it couldn't work pretty much as-is, even fuel-injected.
To Dan's point, I drove a B34 to 321k miles, it was never apart, hardly used any oil. I parted out the car in 2011, sold the engine (which I was actually leaving in the car to scrap) to a guy who put over another 100k miles on it with just oil changes and valve adjustments and then he got t-boned by a school bus (bus' fault). The later engines don't have the valve stem seal problems the M30B32 and earlier do (viton vs the earlier neoprene) and they're so under-stressed they'll run forever.
That's not to take anything away from what Mike has offered up with his list. It really puts things in perspective what it takes to do the job very thoroughly. Once you run through the list and even ballpark some of the stuff, it adds up quickly. I'm putting an M30B28 in my 2800 CS and have spent way more money and much more time than I was initially expecting to with all the while-you're-in-there stuff that came up simply because the car has been off the road so long and while I just wanted to make it a running car, and originally said I can drop the motor out again in about 3.5 hours when the time comes, I guess it made sense to replace a bunch of stuff and do it "right" even though I'm not rebuilding the motor itself because it came from a running car. I might end up regretting that, never know.
This post might not be helpful post.
To Dan's point, I drove a B34 to 321k miles, it was never apart, hardly used any oil. I parted out the car in 2011, sold the engine (which I was actually leaving in the car to scrap) to a guy who put over another 100k miles on it with just oil changes and valve adjustments and then he got t-boned by a school bus (bus' fault). The later engines don't have the valve stem seal problems the M30B32 and earlier do (viton vs the earlier neoprene) and they're so under-stressed they'll run forever.
That's not to take anything away from what Mike has offered up with his list. It really puts things in perspective what it takes to do the job very thoroughly. Once you run through the list and even ballpark some of the stuff, it adds up quickly. I'm putting an M30B28 in my 2800 CS and have spent way more money and much more time than I was initially expecting to with all the while-you're-in-there stuff that came up simply because the car has been off the road so long and while I just wanted to make it a running car, and originally said I can drop the motor out again in about 3.5 hours when the time comes, I guess it made sense to replace a bunch of stuff and do it "right" even though I'm not rebuilding the motor itself because it came from a running car. I might end up regretting that, never know.
This post might not be helpful post.
