My blower motor has been intermittant for the last couple years. I replaced the brushes in the motor but that only lasted for 6 months or so. Sometimes smacking the side of the console or hitting a pothole would get it running again. I finally narrowed the cause down to the sword after reading one of Max Fretter's posts on roadfly. Wiggling the connector got it running again, so I removed the sword & took the cover off the handle & inspected the connector solder joints on the pc board with a magnifying glass, & sure enough, 3 out of 5 solder joints had obvious cracks in them per typical BMW's outsourced piss poor soldering. After reflowing all 5 joints it's running all the time again:

http://www.nmia.com/~dgnrg/sword-01s.jpg

http://www.nmia.com/~dgnrg/sword-02s.jpg

Replaced the microfilter while I was that far into it:

http://www.nmia.com/~dgnrg/page_4.htm