Well, the Trans finally went in our 4.8 is. We knew it was going to go sooner or later with over 100k on the clock. My GF bought a third party warranty from the BMW dealer where she works for $1400... basically a powertrain warranty, several months ago. Then about a month ago we could hear the solenoids starting to "hoot" when shifting. After that we started getting occasional mis-shifts and trans error codes when running diagnostic with DIS.

As it got worse there was a big howl and major slippage when shifting under heavy load. Finally. it went into failsafe mode on a trip to NYC.
She called the warranty company. They came out and inspected and said that they would replace the trans... got them to replace it with a BMW Reman. too!

While they were at it they also approved the repair of a massive oil leak that was coming from the alternator bracket gasket (another common fail point) That alone is jobbed at 9 hrs at the dealership. Everything got done in a matter of days and we had it back in time for our Thanksgiving trip out to Ohio.
So... we got about $8100.00 of work done for the $1400 cost of the warranty and a $100.00 deductable.. This is one time that buying a third party warranty at over 100k really paid off.... A rare happy ending to a failed trans