Originally Posted by wsmeyer

I was suggesting swapping heads as from what I understand he just had a valve job and decarbonizing done on his heads.

All junkyards warranty the engine as replacement only and for a short period of time. Not selling you a bad engine is part reputation, and part the reality that there's a lot of labor involved for them to remove an engine. There is no shortage of X5's in junkyards so they will sell you one from a car that came in totalled in a wreck where it's fair to assume it was running, the mileage is known, and had passed smog at most 2 years ago. Cars that are sold to them with expired registration or from the impound lot they just assume something is wrong with the engine and might pull the heads off to sell but with engines as popular as ours most likely straight to the crusher.