So it's been about 3 months since the X5 broke down, and I'm finally getting around to fixing it. Life got in the way for a while— I moved to a different house in a different part of town (no more HOA!), worked on chain guides for a 740i, did a heck of a lot of work on my 540i touring, worked on a Mustang GT with a friend, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I had the X5 towed to my new house, and it just kinda sat in the backyard for a while. I ended up using my 540i touring to push it further into the backyard so that I could access the garage and use the backyard for parking other cars.
It's desperately in need of a wash, though it's got a coat of sealant on the paint so the paint should be okay despite sitting in the sun for months. It also hasn't been super hot until recently so that's a good thing. Amazingly, the battery only died recently— I was able to lock/unlock it last month when I needed to get something from it. The last time I started it was in March, but it started just fine.
In any case, I found a person parting out an X5 4.6 with much lower miles than mine, and he sold me the transfer case so now I don't have to reuse my questionable 214k mile transfer case. I also bought a new transfer case chain and an extended driveshaft from Cobra Transmission, so everything should come together nicely once all of that stuff arrives early next week.