Water pump win!
 

Put in a new waterpump along with the belts, pulleys, tensioners. That odd sound I'd hear now and then is gone now. Looks like the old waterpump might have been close to failing, and as I suspected, the idler was going bad and the tensioners weren't quite so tight anymore.

So, I'm very glad to have averted the classic BMW catastrophic water pump failure ;)

:thumbup:

Was the water pump original on there? If so at 280km thats pretty damn good life you got out of it!

I agree. I think mine was done around the 170,000km mark. Unfortunately they didn't do a key hose and expansion tank when they did it. The hose I caught, the expansion tank gave the front of my engine a nice bath. If only coolant was a good degreaser then at least it would have knocked something off the list while adding the repair and netted out…...