M5 James and Weasel,

You both saved my butt again. I am glad you talked me into replacing the overflow hose. I figured I could fix the leak easily enough but by taking it off and putting a little silicone around the neck but I followed your advice and ordered a new one.

So today I took the old one off and although it comes off easily enough, it broke into three pieces because it was so brittle. So on with the new one, I proceeded to bleed the system. It went faster than I expected and I lost a little antifreeze thru the bleeder hole because I was trying to multi task and did not have my antifreeze ready to top of the radiator. My advice is have everything ready, have your bleeder screw ready, your 50/50 antifreeze, funnel, and radiator cap. Be ready to put the bleeder bolt in or you will lose some antifreeze.

Anyway, I think all is well. I ran the car a bit and it was holding steady in the middle of the temp gauge and the flow that you spoke about was steady. Thanks for the advice and I encourage anyone with over 60K miles or six years old to replace that overflow hose. I could not believe how brittle it was. :thumbup:

BMW's can be rewarding to own, but they definately have the worst snowball effect when you let the maintenance slide, even just a little. Glad it worked out for ya. :)