Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny

Bingo.

The water pump was not original, as I noted when I did the guides on this X5 a while back. It's from 2011. Based on the Carfax, the car had around 104,000 miles in 2011, so this water pump has essentially lived through a whole lifespan since it failed at 217,000 miles. I probably should have thought about that when doing the chain guide job, but the water pump seemed perfectly fine to me so I put it back on. Every other car I've done guides on I've reused the water pump if it looks fine (also, people don't want to pay for new water pumps when they have me do their guides).

For what it's worth, I've never had a water pump fail in my ownership of any BMW, or any car for that matter. Dunno if I'm really lucky or if I don't keep cars long enough, haha.