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Update. Removed the valve cover myself, took literally 42 minutes. This was dicking around and looking around for the necessary tools. BMW quotes 8.9 hours btw.
Had the bmw tech come to my house and take a look... turns out the VANOS units were fine, as we had all speculated. From there things take a slightly darker turn...
He removed the VANOS and fan shroud so that he could access the center crank bolt, and wouldn't you know it, the gosh damn thing spins "freely." We then put the car in first gear, to see if it would lock things up, and nada....
We took out Plug#1 to see if the cylinder would move as we manually 'spun' the crank bolt, but naturally it did not.
I'm sure you can imagine my level of frustration at this point. My plan of action? No idea honestly.
When i get home this afternoon i will proceed to hooking up the battery and attempt to crank the car so that the starter will move the flywheel, keeping an eye out on cylinder #1 to see if it moves. My logic is that if it moves, then the crankshaft is at least in 1 piece and the issue is not on the flywheel side of things.
This would shift my focus to the crank shaft bolt... seeing as spins freely, my logic is that it could have snapped, thereby not allowing the timing components to rotate as they should... the issue i would see would be 'how' to remove said snapped bolt. I figure i could try to tap it out, but I am sure that is an odyssey in it of itself... Any thoughts, opinions?
Stay tuned for the next horrific episode!
PS
Sorry for the long post and or if what i just wrote makes no sense... not exactly thinking straight.
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