Happy ending here - at least there's no problem with Pelican's parts.
First - I do hope that everyone in the BMW community understands what a really-well-served bunch we are. I ended up in email conversations with both Wayne Dempsey at Pelican and Doug Mahar at Turner. The fact that both of them are willing to answer questions from a 'little' customer like me speaks volumes about the entire community.
I never opened a call with Pelican about the arms I got, though last week I got a request to do an online survey, so I did. I was honest, noting that I was very happy with the cost, shipping and service, and not with the parts. I added comments to the effect that I didn't think it was the right arm, that Lemforder had sent Pelican the wrong arm, and they just passed it along. I did get a response to the survey via email. We explained our positions further, with Judy and then Wayne noting that Lemforder is a decent provider and this is what they sent. Wayne noted that his parts guys had seen BMW parts recently and that they were identical. Having seen my own arms plus some pictures, I pretty much agreed to disagree, and Wayne offered to take the arms back in the coming year if I got substantially different parts form BMW. I had already installed them, so there wasn't much more he could do.
I had shown them the pictures on Turner's web site, with the visible all-metal nature of that ball joint, like the ones I took off my car, so I sent Turner a note, asking what the arms looked like. Doug Mahar wrote back and sent pictures of the latest arms that they had gotten from BMW, blue stickers and all. And they've got the same blue sleeve on the outer ball joint as the Lemforders I got from Pelican. So there is no beef with Pelican's parts - visually, at least without cutting things open, they are the same. That's good.
I do wonder why BMW has apparently stopped with the visibly 'all-metal' nature of that ball joint. Even if the insides are roughly the same, these new arms now have metal-plastic-metal contact with the steering knuckle, while they used to have metal-metal contact in that spot. Should it make any discernable difference? Probably not. But it does raise questions. If you want something that looks to be really "all metal," then the Meyle HD's might be the only way to go. If you buy BMW's arms, you are now getting a slightly different part than what used to be available.
