to follow-up and thanks cn90. I ordered a replacement compressor from the junk year. $80 (I know - rolling the dice - and the one I got looked pretty beat up). It tested good with my multimeter, about 4 ohms resistance. Today I swapped in the junkyard compressor and filled the system back up with gas. I thought I was going to have to remove coolant hoses, but I didn't... took out the fan blade/housing and then just got in there with a 3/8" ratchet and 13mm, 3 compressor bolts came out. removed some of the ac lines with a 7mm allen. I didn't even have to jack up the car, plenty of room to pull out the compressor. I also did the mod (where I jumped the thermal fuse - which did fail on my old compressor a year ago - much easier to do the mod with the compressor out of the car - than in it). All in all, pretty easy repair. I winged the pag oil amount and winged the r134a fill until system was cold and running good pressure in the range my gauge says was normal for the ambient temp.

One remaining question - I never noticed it before, but the system would do the following. The system would build up high side pressure - then the aux fan would kick on - then lower the pressure and fan goes off, and then repeat. Is this normal when the car is idling, I guess not needed on highway with air flowing over the condenser.

Thanks every. BMWs rock. X5 are best.