Your dealer reaffirms why dealers are often referred to as "stealers". If it were me, I would never go back to them given their willingness to overcharge in what I see as a blatant rip off.

$800 - highway robbery!

DIY the thermostat and throw in a new expansion tank + water pump and you'll have preventively replaced the three major failure points of older X5 coolant systems. For around $400 you can buy OEM versions of those three components + upper/lower rad hoses + BMW coolant.

:iagree: I agree and I would kindly explain why.

I checked out the DIY for the water pump and thermostat replacement. I can see it taking three hours to take everything apart and put it back togehter if the water pump is being replaced. However they are only replacing the thermostat and when I asked they actually said that replacing the water pump was not neccesarry. Is it even possible to remove the thermostat without removing all of the things that are neccessary to remove the water pump.

Years ago I called out the Mercedes dealer for charging thru the roof for a simple job. In fact I took it to the dealership manager and explained that what they were charging was unacceptable. They reduced the bill to a reasonable level.

1k... hell no

I had the same problem you have with my 540i. Except the radiator was blown on the lower driver side :(.. Even with a radiator and thermostat the job was under $700.

My only concern was that when the thermo. was replaced i " Fake overheated " a few times, but that went away and I haven't had an event since. 0.0

I received quotes from two other shops in my area. Shop A quoted me at $385.00, Shop B quoted me at $220.00.

Sounds like the decision is getting easier. Good luck.

The dealership was not willing to budge on the labor time for the thermostat and they were adding almost an hour of labor for replacing the upper hose that I felt was unnecessary. I would have happily paid them to do it if they would have dropped the labor time down to the actual time they were going to spend replacing it. They also quoted me on the replacing the rear brakes ($558) and front sway bar end links ($288). I though the quotes were a little high but reasonable since it is a dealership, I am not against the dealership making an honest buck and I am sure that they do great work. However, I really felt like they were trying to hose me on the thermostat. So I have decided to do it myself. So for the $397.00 dollars that I felt they were overcharging me they lost about $1,800.00 dollars in business.
Another member tacaiflift http://www.xoutpost.com/members/tacairlift.html posted some really detailed directions he found on replacing the thermostat only. The second half is in dutch but if you run it through Google translate it puts it into English.
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-forums/x5-e53-forum/83480-thermostat-only-replacement.html#post843566
I have bought a new thermostat from NAPA for $65.00. It looks less challenging than changing the thermostat on a 328iC which I have done before. In addition to the thermostat, I am going to replace the left and right front sway bar end links. I have bought both of these for about $80.00 from ECS Tuning and they are BMW factory parts. The dealer price on the two end links was $158. I have also bought the upper and lower radiator hoses from ECS. Both of these I purchased for less than $100 and they are also BMW factory parts. The dealer cost on just the upper hose was almost $100. ECS has got some really great prices, but there is a one to three day delay on getting BMW parts shipped.
I also decided to buy a premium membership to Xoutpost for $35. If I replace the brakes, sway bar end links, thermostat,the upper radiator hose and lower radiator hose I will save myself almost $1500.00 . I would not be able to do this with out the information that I received from this forum. I think it's only fair to give back to the site and help support it. Thank you everyone for all of your help.