brake light circuit

[Mendozart]

I'm working on my cousin's 93' 525ia and she's got the brake light circuit fault. Also, her instrument cluster is going wacky, where it's just got lights flickering all over the place. The questions I have are if just one bulb is out will all lights not work? All brake lights are not working. I was able to pull the cluster out and move the plugs around so that display would work right and display faults. I was going to swap my 92' lkm but they had different #'s. Is there a trick to removing the brake light switch? I couldn't remove it. I think the switch is bad. I also opened the lkm and there didn't seem to have any obvious bad solder points. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

[Paul in NZ]

brake light circuit error is ussually the brake light switch.I think most people "cut" the switch out.Its a lot easier to work on if you have the brake pedal pushed down with a block of wood or something from the front of the seat or the steering wheel.Check e34.net.The cluster sounds like you need to replace the capacitors,also found on e 34.net

[Mendozart]

Picked up a new brake light switch today and upon inspection I see how you release the switch to remove it. For anyone that has to remove this you have to depress the brake pedal, then pull red sleeve out of switch so you can squeeze and release the tabs. When you install new switch you push the red sleeve back in. This keeps the switch locked in place

[Mendozart]

Installed switch and it took care of the brake light circuit problem. I also applied some deoxit to all the instrument cluster connectors and seems to have fixed the bizarre behavior.