I am sort of kicking myself for doing the airbag recall because I have read about a number of other folks having issues and then I had an issues. It's taken 3 weeks and 3 loaners for them to figure it out.

Another update, yesterday was driving after being gone for the weekend, the noise came back and I got back to BMW and had the shop foreman ride with me.

After telling me again that it was the head unit (and telling me I would need to pay for it...) he came back and said it was the fan in the IHKA panel. There is a small fan that sucks air in the cabin to test the temperature and control HVAC. BMW mis-diagnosed this 3 times now with prices ranging from over $3k, then $1.8k and now $1.4k all with different parts. What a joke...

BMW is pulling their normal BS about it being incidental and blah blah. I pushed back after the service manager contradicted himself several times about what parts are removed for the airbag recall. I ask for the procedure several times (which they did not what to provide) and then he went to talk to his manager after that. They are going to the area manager about replacing the IHKA which is $1100 bucks plus some coding time. I have heard they have to "remove the dash" but I don't know what parts of the dash. Other people have been dealing with various rattles, GPS not being hooked up, cords loose, etc

On eBay, the part ranges from $65 to $300 and from YouTube it takes about 15 minutes to install. You may or may not have to code the part but I have software so shouldn't be an issue. I'll see what the area manager says and decide what to do. I'm traveling next week for a couple months so running out of time to deal with this issue.

Here's a link for a different model but same concept.

Repairing buzzing noise from HVAC