Our precious 16-valve 740 just died. We think the harmonic balancer broke, thereby breaking the timing belt and cam belt, bending some valves (at least 2 that we can see).
Since my mechanic says if we want to salvage/resurrect the car in any way, we should use this opportunity to swap engines with a normal 8-valve. We can't afford the money required to buy a used engine (with perhaps more troubles if it wasn't a rebuilt one) to do that, not to mention the labour costs. However, it has been suggested to me that perhaps we could just remove the head (which we have done ourselves, hence no labour cost involved, only parts/gaskets) and swap it for a normal 8-valve head. Can this be done successfully? Has anyone out there ever done this? What is involved?
The other choice, of course, is to strip the car for parts and let it die (sob!).
Thanks!