Bad news/good news for me...
The bad news is it turns out they believe the culprit is a throttle position sensor. 5.5 hours labor (dealer time) + 1 hour diagnostic time + sensor cost = $1050. Ouch.
Now, there was a little more news and it was also bad. He said that sometimes replacing the sensor doesn't solve the problem, so it probably makes sense to replace the actuator as well, because if they put it back together and now it's still throwing codes, they have to do more labor to go back in and replace the other part. He said that part is $1300
Well, we chatted, and I told him I know my car is out of warranty by 11 months... in service date was 9/2008 so we're awful close to a full year. But the car does have low mileage, I'm sitting at 42,600 which is still under the original 50k threshold.
I'm not delusional (or a dick).. obviously this is out of warranty and I know it, so I wasn't going to argue over the mileage when I know it runs out at 50k or the date, whichever comes first. I nicely asked if there was anything they could do because of the low mileage, and he said he would call his BMW rep and see if they would at least offer to cover part of it. But of course, no promises. I didn't get my hopes up too high.
He called me back a little bit ago and told me BMW agreed to cover both parts, in full, with labor. I am super happy of course because that is amazing customer service. I fully intend to write a letter commending the service manager and dealership to show my appreciation, it's the least I can do.
Hopefully this will be the end of my issues. And since they told me my original low pressure fuel sensor was never the issue, I now have my old sensor available if anyone wants a working one for very cheap, PM me
c