Off to VOB I go! I had Dan Martin do a valve adjustment on my '06 M Coupe because it's at 66K miles and I thought the valves were rattling a bit. Dan called me up a few hours later and said it wasn't the valves.

Upon further investigation, it appears that the VANOS unit is the culprit. According to Dan, a metal tab had sheared off (presumably one of the two which connect to the exhaust-side cam) and was rattling around in the unit. I'm damn lucky it didn't get into the timing chain.

Now for the fun part. The car is out of warranty at 66K miles and I'm the second owner. I'm anticipating a large fight with BMWNA over why a car with only 66K miles is eating itself. All services have been performed, so there's no issue there, but I'll be damned if I'm paying $4K-plus to fix this. I spoke with BMWNA this afternoon and they want a dealer to look at it, so I'm taking it down to VOB this evening.

Any insights or help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.