The head came off pretty quickly. Having done it once before helped quite a bit - a lot of that due to having all the tools needed on hand. My only brain fart was trying to turn the motor over with the car in 2nd gear.

Anyway, here are pictures of the internals. I included a pic of the #1 cylinder and a pic of the #4 for comparison. The only thing that jumped out was the carbon debris; there's a bunch of little specs on #1 while #4 is clean. I didn't see any obvious piston-to-valve contact point; a better trained eye might pick one up.

The only piston pic is of the #1 cylinder.

This is about both rocker arms of the #1 cylinder breaking off..see thread http://www.bimmer.info/forum/showthread.php?t=8797

Analysis anyone?

(and yes, I do know how to spell piston)

Dave