After dragging my feet, I finally pushed myself and finished installing timing guide rails, valley pan gasket repair, new water pump, valve cover gaskets, all new hoses, oil seals, etc.

On start up, there was a bit of a rattle, but that was probably was due to oil starvation. Car started almost immediately. Ran very smooth. After a few seconds rattle went away and I haven't heard any rattles since.

About a minute later the "service engine light" came on. Perturbed, I checked the codes and it was the P011 and P021 codes. That means the computer detected a discrepancy between the CPS and the timing wheels on the left and right engine banks.

Next, I noticed a slight oil leak on the passenger's side. It was dripping on top of the air conditioning compressor. I believe it is the O Ring for the dipstick. F**k!

Drove the car and it drove fine. Opened the water expansion tank and noticed tiny little brown bubbles. Head gasket? Nope. Put some of the water on a paper towel and sniffed it. Transmission fluid!!!!!

So, the Beisan Vanos kit was a complete success. I changed the o-rings and crimped the vanos as per their instructions. Glad I did so. The engine is very very quiet and smooth.

Checked transmission fluid. . . no water (phew!!!). Didn't lose much fluid. I removed the transmission heat exchanger, sealed off all of the water lines going to the transmission thermostat and added a Hayden air cooler. After adding the cooler, I heard the transmission making a lot of noise and it went into failsafe mode. I cycled the shifter through all of the gears and the sound went away. The failsafe warning also went away. I can only guess that a lot of air got pushed through the tranny making it lose pressure momentarily tripping the warning. Transmission temperature dropped about 20 degrees! (was same as water temperature before...now about 170 degrees) Yay! Apparently the failure of the heat exchanger occurs only when it got hot. Will not trust another heat exchanger with my transmission.

Removed valve covers and marked timing wheels with a magic marker. My goal was to turn the wheels clockwise 1/16 of an inch at a time until I got the codes to go away. It worked on the first try for both sides. Its odd how little it was off. Just one width of the magic marker line was all that was needed. .

The dipstick O ring looks like a real PITA to change. The leak has increased.

Soon will have my beloved X5 back in full form for the summer. It has been sitting for 2 years and I refused to sell it. The water pump disintegrated and i decided to fix everything on the engine. Got a lot of ideas from this forum. The only thing I am worried about is the driveline and transmission. But, when and if it happens....Im going to rebuild it myself. Its got 197,000 miles and I intend to keep this truck another 200,000. At 300,000, I'll open her up again and change everything again to get that last 100k out of it.