Right tail lamp malfunction

Dealer repaired/ replaced the following today under warranty on my 08 535xi after diagnosing shorted/burned right taillamp assembly:

- new connector

- new carrier

- created ground

- replaced bulbs


no issues with driver side assembly as of now

I am now joining this thread encountering the same problems. 08 528i no warranty left and three weeks ago one of the small bulbs burnt out and i received a quick message through iDrive. Went to the dealer paid $24 bucks and had it replaced.

The service guy warned me about this inherent problem with my model and said that if the bulb burns out again I would need to have the wire assembly replaced. Aprox $200 bucks.

Three weeks later that bulb is burnt out again, so I wanted to ask the question. If I were to replace the burnt out bulb and the matching one on the right side with LED bulbs that consume less power. Do you think that might avoid a further problem and save me from having to get the rewiring done?

As an FYI...
I wrote into BMW Canada complaining about this issue. This is clearly a defect and if it can affect the rear light cluster and potentially the brake lights it should be a recall. I don't have warranty left. No problems on my part paying for maintenance related issues...but this type of defect shouldn't happen on a car of this calibre. See how and if they respond.

Cheers

Originally Posted by vbcgy

Do you think that might avoid a further problem and save me from having to get the rewiring done?

Cheers

No! Because the existing high resistance to ground (earth) issue is not fixed.

Thanks...figures there is no cheaper option.

I got a reply from BMW Canada. No warranty...blah blah...won't do anything as I expected.
I guess they will wait for someone's brake lights to fail, cause a crash and then issue a recall.

Hi,

Rear left tail light cluster on my 520d 2009 stops working altogether and then comes back on intermittently. This happens every 2-3 mins. When the cluster was totally blank, it just slapped lightly on it and it came back on for few mins before going blank again.

When the cluster goes blank, iDrive starts throwing error messages for rear left brake light, indicator, fog light and reverse light failure one by one.

Is this also a known problem?

Regards

Originally Posted by kannit

Hi,

Rear left tail light cluster on my 520d 2009 stops working altogether and then comes back on intermittently. This happens every 2-3 mins. When the cluster was totally blank, it just slapped lightly on it and it came back on for few mins before going blank again.

When the cluster goes blank, iDrive starts throwing error messages for rear left brake light, indicator, fog light and reverse light failure one by one.

Is this also a known problem?

Regards

This does sound like a loose connection. Have you tried pulling the light harness, making sure the bulbs and connections are secure? As soon as a bulb connection is lost, it will trigger the idrive alert.

I repaired mine a month ago...the Brown wire on the harness that plugs into the light assembly had overheated and melted the pin inside the housing. The brown wire is ground.

I cut off the brown wire from the harness and soldered a connector to it. Then I removed the brake housing and soldered a wire onto the grounding block inside of it (its pretty easy, the inside of the housing has a stamped piece of metal that runs ground to all the different light bulbs), ran that wire out thru the back of the housing thru a 1/8 drilled hole (the housing is NOT air tight, so this makes no difference) and soldered a connector to it to mate with the brown wire.

Shrink wrapped the 2 together.

Problem fixed. :-)

Originally Posted by kannit

Hi,

Rear left tail light cluster on my 520d 2009 stops working altogether and then comes back on intermittently. This happens every 2-3 mins. When the cluster was totally blank, it just slapped lightly on it and it came back on for few mins before going blank again.

When the cluster goes blank, iDrive starts throwing error messages for rear left brake light, indicator, fog light and reverse light failure one by one.

Is this also a known problem?

Regards

Originally Posted by kannit

Hi,

Rear left tail light cluster on my 520d 2009 stops working altogether and then comes back on intermittently. This happens every 2-3 mins. When the cluster was totally blank, it just slapped lightly on it and it came back on for few mins before going blank again.

When the cluster goes blank, iDrive starts throwing error messages for rear left brake light, indicator, fog light and reverse light failure one by one.

Is this also a known problem?

Regards

Same problem, different side... always the brown ground wire terminal.

Originally Posted by vbcgy

This does sound like a loose connection. Have you tried pulling the light harness, making sure the bulbs and connections are secure? As soon as a bulb connection is lost, it will trigger the idrive alert.

You were right! The wire connector was loose. I pulled out the connector and with the help of a small screw driver I narrowed the holes of female wire connector assuming that pins of male connector will sit firmly into it...and it worked!! It is not going blank on road bumps or any other jerk while driving.

I also checked other connections and ground and nothing was burnt out fortunately. I think that would happen only when ground is bit loose and thus causing high resistance around the loose connection which will eventually heat up that area of loose connection.

Only problem I faced was opening the plastic cover over the tail light housing. It was damn difficult and at one point I thought it will break because I had to apply so much of force. That did not happen of course.

Thanks all for your help

LOL - Always the Brown Wire...true true!

And the pins can get loose and go bad quick too...mine was fine, never a flicker, and whatever happened was very quick, within 3 days an intermittent flicker went to full-out failure. ( -its a design issue & BMW knows about it)

I have a hunch that the brown wires needed to be a tad bigger gauge to handle the current of all the lights in the assembly, and probably a double ground would have been good to keep the actual pin from heating up...my brown wire was actually fried for about 1 inch outside the harness plug, and the female pin was the color of burned metal in a campfire, and the male pin inside the housing was completely gone - melted.

In any event, there are a number of relatively easy fixes for it for those who are not afraid to get their hands a little dirty...besides, we get to learn a little bit here and there about a pretty complex driving machine :-)

Originally Posted by Nube1kenobi

Same problem, different side... always the brown ground wire terminal.