Who's got BMW S52 knowledge?

So... I bought my S52 swap for my track car. Seller said "head gasket went." I pulled the head, look down and find the no. 2 cylinder wall is cracked and scored. Are these blocks resleevable? Or can I hone it out?

S52 is iron block/siamesed cylinders. I don't think there's enough material to sleeve them.

The 2-year aluminum block used in Z3s can be sleeved.

Find another block and move on.

You can safely punch them out to 87mm (well, 86.995 IIRC) but you are going to need expensive head studs and a special gasket to bite into the block/head to seal reliably with that little material left. Well, and $900 in pistons. RESIST the urge to up the compression ratio significantly while you are in there unless you want a 20hr motor. People might say you can use the stock stretch bolts but ... I've taken the same head off 3x proving them wrong. HEAD STUDS. Re-torque after a couple heat cycles.

If you can clear the damage using the factory over-bore specs you can use off-the-shelf pistons from VAC but anything you do at this point is going to cost more than another JY engine. The upside is ... you know what you have when you are done. And with cams it will make power. But, if you cracked into the water jacket... it's junk.

I just sold a good rebuild candidate S52 block for $750 and that seemed like the going rate. You can do that with fresh bearings, rings and so on. Here is a future tip - use a real junkyard that plugs into car-part.com when buying whole motors - they warranty the thing and will swap even for one that works if they give you garbage. The cost is usually pretty comparative and they can source them from all over the country if it's not on the lot. An example, I just bought a ZF trans from CT delivered locally for pickup at "my" junkyard for $425. 60 day return policy.

^I was thinking if the seller said "head gasket" that meant the crack was through the bore to the water jacket, which would be junk, right?

Guess we need more info from OP.