Yep, I hear you loud and clear, thanks James. You're right, I suppose I'm still in shock that this has happened to me-never had ANYTHING like this in my 20 years of driving. Especially seeing as its a V8. Especially seeing as its a BMW!!! Its like they planted a frigging 'this is gonna cost you big at some point' timebomb in your car!!!

I'll talk to my friend tomorrow and go through all this with him to make sure we're on the same page. He's a good mechanic, and I wouldn't trust my cars with anyone else, especially something as important as this, but we still need to be on the same page, right?!

Thank you again. Sorry to hear about your 7 series too, thats heartbreaking.