Nice work on all that.

When you rebuilt the VANOS, did you replace the "rattle rings" as well as the gaskets?

I did those, even without symptoms, when doing a similar job as you did on my M54B30 last summer. The rattle rings are slightly thinner than the ones they replace. This allows things to tighten up, accounting for the slop in everything else that developed over the life of the system, and getting rid of any VANOS rattle.

And BTW, I did not touch the VANOS solenoids. Everything still fine at 190+k miles. But I know at that level, the M54 will be different from your 4.6.

__________________
2001 X5 3.0i, 203k miles, AT, owned since 2014