Originally Posted by PropellerHead

well, it was weird. I described it as best I could above.

While accelerating, it really felt like the transmission shifts when it SHOULD just sort of ease into 4th gear. Maybe some demonstration with RPM and time in will help?

These are WAY estimates. It's difficult to even pay this close attention when the car gets into 3rd gear- I needed to look at the road!

Stop-Normal.
1st gear change- Not sure of RPM. Maybe 2K?- even if its not accurate, the gaps of about .5K are what it FEELS like anyway. Bear with the estimates.
2nd gear change-1.5K (I guess) to about 2.3K
3rd gear change-1.8K (closer guess) to about 2.4k

--and that's when it would happen--

The car would seem like it would downshift- back down to about 1.9K. And then it would quickly- like more quickly than a sedate, standard- NON SPORT MODE- acceleration and change through the gears should require-rev back to 2.4K or so...

4th gear change- about 2.6-3K. (maybe)

The rest of the changes and associated engine sounds progressed as normal.

The real clincher was the ONE time that it did it in manual mode. It was key to point somewhere other than the transmission after progressing through the testing. I tested what would happen if switching to sport mode from 'normal' for a few months, then finally just trying manual mode. When it did it there (only once), I knew something was amiss and I was more certain that it wasn't the transmission- Especially on an X5 with (now) only 22K miles that had behaved this way since 11K miles last year.