M66 vs M58 and a few other related questions

[gwcook]

Hello all,

This winter I bought a '98 v70r for a relatively good deal, and have been working on repairing/replacing all the necessary parts. A little bit of background if you're interested:

The previous owner bought the car from California about 2 years ago, drove it around the block once, and due to some health issues never got around to restoring it. Essentially, the thing was totally unsafe to drive because all of the control arm bushings/motor mounts (basically all the rubber parts) were disintegrating or just completely gone. This made the car pull pretty hard in a random direction whenever you were braking, which definitely was not preferable. The paint is also pretty sun damaged, but on the other hand there's nearly no rust on the car at all, which makes it a whole lot nicer to work on. Additionally, after purchasing the car, I realized it already had a few upgrades installed, like a japanifold, jewel front headlights, and an eggcrate grille. I haven't taken a super good look at the turbo or throttle body yet to see if those have been modified in any way, but either way I'm pretty happy with what's on there already.

So far, I've dropped out everything as far as the subframe and axles, and have been working on getting all that stuff cleaned up. I've bought new parts for anything that can wear down over the years or was broken (inner/outer tie rods+boots for the steering rack, lower control arms, cv boots, new strut/coilover assemblies, hubs, rotors, and pads, and probably more that I'm forgetting to mention), and I'm sandblasting/rebuilding the calipers and yokes. The hope is that it will drive like new (or at least as close as I can get), and then once I've actually got it rolling I'll be able to make sure nothing else is screwed up so I can move on to modding it.

Now onto a few questions:

I've been poking around these forums to figure out what exactly I'll need to properly execute an AWD manual swap, and it seems like they shouldn't be too difficult. I know the M58's are super annoying to find in the states, and that many have decided to go for the m66 instead. Besides ease of installation, is there any real reason it might be worth it to wait for an m58 to pop up (reliability, ability to maintain it, etc)? If not, I'll probably just go with the m66 as well.

If that ends up happening, what specific modifications/fabrication needs to be done that otherwise wouldn't be necessary with an m58 swap? I have a bit of an idea after looking at other manual swap threads, but it seems like there's a few different ways to go about it, and I'm not sure what's preferred. Additionally, a lot of the more detailed threads I've looked at seem to have broken links for the photos which would have helped quite a bit if I were able to see them.

Additionally, I'd like to know if there are any specific/specialty tools that are necessary to do it properly, or might make the swap go quicker/smoother. Obviously it would help a lot to have something like a car lift, but I'm thinking about stuff within a more reasonable price range. I want to make sure I have absolutely everything I'll need beforehand to reduce the time the car will be non-driveable, as it is my only car.

Lastly, are there any miscellaneous things you wished you would have done before/during/after a swap? No dumb answers here, I'll take all the wisdom I can get.

If you're able to answer any of these questions, it'll be a huge help for me and very much appreciated. I'm looking forward to actually getting to drive the damn thing, and might make a thread detailing my future misadventures with repairing/modding it if anyone would be interested. Thanks in advance!