08 E61 BMW estate taillights issue

jrox

So the issue is, none of the bulbs/ led’s on driver side of tailgate work but when wired across to the passenger side everything works as it should. The warnings still come up on the screen at the dash though.

The car needs to be nct’d so if the quick fix has the lights working, will the warnings be a fail?

Also the rear wiper isn’t working. Could it be linked and Is that an nct fail as well?

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks.

biko

Manual
https://www.ncts.ie/media/1004/nct-manual-july-2014.pdf

2. This test only applies to front windscreens.

This means rear wiper is not tested at all.

Tell Tale (lights or audible indicator)
12 Missing.
13 Not working or faulty

Warning lights on looks like a fail (probably just a visual retest).

Your issue is probably the wiring inside the harness from the car to the tailgate being old and frayed.
This is common in many cars.

jrox

Thanks Biko.

I’ll bodge it up and hopefully get the nct out the way.

What I’m after is someone with experience in this specific model.
It seems to be a common problem area with BMW’s.

I think, with the research I’ve done so far, I could sort this issue in every model BMW but the one I actually own.

biko

This is a terribly shot video but it shows where everything is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmoI6Z4YQNk

jrox

Perfect Biko!

That looks like exactly what I needed. Your a star! Are you a BMW owner yourself or did you go looking for that to help me out? I spent hours on YouTube last night looking for something like that.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how I get on.

Thanks again, very much appreciated.

biko

You're welcome

Do take a snap or two and post up afterwards in case another poster has the same issue.

jrox

Biko, I got it done over the wkend and it’s no simple job even though BMW have the best clips for there plastics I’ve ever dealt with. A light pull on the plastic in the right direction and they all come off easily, not one broken clip nor cracked plastic. The trick is , if it don’t come easy, your pulling in the wrong direction or you’ve missed a screw. Remember that rule and you won’t break anything.

I took lots of pics of how I did it but I cat figure how to put them up. In hind sight I should have detailed the order that the plastics come off. After that my only advice would be to salvage the correct color and size of wires because I couldn’t get the slack I needed to re connect them and I figured that the stiff joints whouldnt last long where they broke initially anyway so I joined them using wires from another car. Also, get a good soldering iron, I started with a cheapy but wasn’t happy with the result so I borrowed a gas one from a mate. Quality was worlds apart.

I’ll work on the pics and hopefully have them up shortly
Thanks again for your help.

biko

Upload images to https://postimages.org or similar site

If you cannot attach them to your post you can PM them to me and I will add them to your post