It may have saved me some time until my shop gets built, that's what I was sincerely hoping for. Just bought a house so ALL of my saved money was put in to the down. Had to take out a loan, through the transmission shop, to cover it but I need to sell the X now because the type of house loan I'm getting won't accept my overtime hours (12 hour shifts at work, so 4 hours OT every day) because I haven't been there for two years - only a year and a half. That puts my debt to income ratio completely out of line.

I took it to a local transmission shop that gets work from other reputable automotive shops around here that don't do their own transmission work. Cottman Transmission. Total cost was $5k for all new parts in the old case. They said it's what they see 9 times out of 10 with the ZFs that have failing torque converters. It's a domino effect.

I would say about the only warning before the failure was that the shuddering started to come back in sport mode, just barely. It was two weeks before the transmission failed and I believe it shuddered twice. I took it camping Memorial Day weekend and it must have been the drive that did it in. Lots of enthusiastic driving up the twisties and it performed great. Two days later it died with no warning.

If that noise is being caused by worn timing chain guides allowing the timing chains to slap around and you continue to drive it, you're heading for a catastrophic failure. The V8s are interference engines, the valves open into the same areas the piston occupy at TDC, when the valve timing goes out, the pistons and valves pound the piss out of each other. HUGE $$$, some on here have replaced their motors when this happened.

Shit, my 06 4.4i is starting this stutter effect. Fml. No codes and does it around the 1200rpm range.

The good news is I drove with the misfire/shutter for 2 years and it never really got worse. Just drive in sport mode and it pretty much goes away but it never REALLY goes away. OR do what I did.....sell the X5 and buy a 335i. Never been happier!