[mortlock7]

Originally Posted by realcam

Sorry for the confusion around my post but I accidentally deleted it. And reinserted it.

Anyway.

As you probably know by now the chain itself was supposed to be maintenance free and therefore it's located in the least accessible spot at the back of the engine. Hence the expensive quote from your garage, the engine would have to come out to swap it.
But I was told the tensioner is quite easily accessible and not expensive.

So if you want to do something to put your mind at ease I'd probably seek the advice of a BMW garage with regards to noise levels and what they think and you could mention the improved tensioner to them.

You can actually find BMW N47 owners on youtube - both 3 series and 5 series - and they demonstrate the noise in videos they uploaded. It might give you an indication or else it might make you paranoid.

Yes well it should be! Never in my life have I heard of timing chain components needing replacing - BMW really got it wrong there!

That is a good idea, I'm sure they've seen a few before so they might be able to identify any noises and how severe (any) issues might be!