Quick but relevant note to this great thread. You have to jack the front of the X5 off the ground to get the fan out. Luckily, living in San Francisco,this meant I only had to pull to the edge of my garage as the sidewalk is quite a bit lower. I have no jacks so this saved my bacon! Also the old fan was hard to remove, required a mallet, but the new aftermarket fan (thanks Amazon, $160), slipped back in rather easily.
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'02 X5 3.0, 54K original miles as of October 2014