Tail light issue

[ryansbmw]

This is a really dumb problem. Replaced my brake and turn signals with LEDs. Used Bimmergeeks Protool to code the hot and cold checks. Everything works dandy. After a week, I got a message on the screen saying left tail brake light out. I have the wife step on the brakes and sure enough that tail light doesn’t light up. I remember swapping the bulbs side to side to see if the message follows the bulb and it did. A few weeks go by and I finally get around to buying a new set of bulbs, plug them in and no bueno. Swap the bulbs and the left side still won’t light up.

Is there some sort of fault I need to clear somewhere? Or is possible the socket went bad?

Edit: All other bulbs on that socket work so I know it’s not a ground issue or fuse. I checked wiring and the socket holder and didn’t see any scorching or trouble signs either

[argento]

Up top. Not sure this will help, but I've had where the bulb didn't work and I added some dielectric grease and the. It worked. I use it on all my bulbs. And I have had a socket go bad in my E36M3 back in the day. If you turn voltage monitoring back on does it throw a code?

Sorry that's all I got.

[ryansbmw]

Originally Posted by argento

Up top. Not sure this will help, but I've had where the bulb didn't work and I added some dielectric grease and the. It worked. I use it on all my bulbs. And I have had a socket go bad in my E36M3 back in the day. If you turn voltage monitoring back on does it throw a code?

Sorry that's all I got.

I’ll try it but I don’t think that’s my issue. The fact that 3 different bulbs won’t work on the left but work just fine on the right is strange.

I have been reading about short circuit counters and that may be the cause of my problem. Apparently, if an electrical problems pops up so many times, the car actually shuts down power to that circuit to prevent damage. Once I get a chance, I’m going to download the diagnostics license ( I only have the coding license at the moment) for Protool and I should be able to go into the FRM and clear/reset the fault and hopefully be fine.

[ryansbmw]

Update: Problem solved.

I used Protool to check for faults in the FRM and sure enough there was 2 faults for the left brake lamp, one of which was a short circuit. I reset the circuit and cleared the errors and the the tail light is now functioning again with the new LED. This should be the end of the issue

Moral of the story: don’t drive around too long with a burned out tail light so you don’t need to dive into the module

On a side note, I highly recommend the Bimmergeeks Protool app to everyone out there. The diagnostics part is pretty straight forward and being able to look into every module on the car and check for errors makes life really easy. That license also can register batteries and code injectors. The coding license is very simple to use but a tad more involved in some cases when you need to activate/deactivate multiple functions in multiple modules to get the desired result. Oh, and neither license is Vin locked so you can use it on multiple cars. For $140 for the master license, it’s a no brainer