Spent a couple hours in the garage last night, managed to liberate the exhaust - and what a monster of an exhaust it is! It's soooooooooo heavy, and the muffler boxes are huuuuuge!!! I shall not be re-using those (although I may well re-use the catalytic converters).

Removed some splash guards from the bottom of the engine and disonnected the starter wiring. Although this turned out to be a pointless excercise as it looks like I can leave the starter attatched to the engine and it will come out with it.

This afternoon I have to go and have a look at a friend's daughter's car, a little Pug 106 which she ran out of petrol and is now misfiring. (Groan) hopefully it's just air in the system and I can bleed it easily. After that I will spend some more time with mr BMW and may even get the engine out!

Wish me luck - I need it.