OBC Rear & License Plate lights warnings even tho I..

[Bo525i]

Completely renewed the 2 rear harnesses on my touring, I tried with another LKM and another CCM to see if they went away.. No, same story!

Everything works perfectly but those 2 darn warnings are starting to get on my nerves! :( Could it be the front light adjustment motors that are throwing these @ me?

Any suggestions?

[Elekta]

Do you have a towing system? Do you have headlight motors? That was the source of my LIC PLATE LIGHT error code. I made the same mistake and replaced my entire harness as a newb (8hours of labor) - very costly

Unplug it and see.

[Bo525i]

Well my towing has been history for some time, first thing that I disconnected when I got the car (all the wires were attached with those infamous clamps in a very amateurish way) just the hook itself left..

Only headlight motors left, problem is.. I need those motors as I´m running HID's and the adjustment is a must for them to be kinda legal! ;)

Btw.: "replaced my entire harness as a newb" doesn´t really apply, if your harnesses were as brittle/worn as mine plus the 2 repairs that I did on the old wires already.. New ones were indeed needed, at first I tried some from the scrapyard but none were really good or missed some essential wires, so I eventually got brand new ones from the stealer, I like things to be perfect! :)

[whiskychaser]

Tried new bulbs? Mine has thrown a rear light warning before the bulb has actually blown

[Bo525i]

Yup, brand new bulbs too and I tried other sockets as well! :)

[shogun]

In case you have automatic headlight adjustment: pull the connector from each headlight adjustment motor and see if the faults disappear. I so, condensator helps to control the peaks. Common problem on EURO headligts with the Hella adjustment motors of older design.
Here info how to do from the German E34 forum
http://forum.e34.de/thread.php?threadid=107819

Drawing is easy to understand
LWR Motor = automatic headlight adjustment motor behind the headlights
schwarz = black
schwarz / grau = black/grey
braun = brown

[Bo525i]

Thx a billion Shogun, does indeed smell like the headlight adjustment motors are the culprits! :)

[shogun]

same here on the 7-Forum
http://www.7-forum.com/forum/24/sinnlose-fehlermeldungen-leuchtweitenregulierungsmotoren-loesung-79879.html

[leicesterboy15]

I am getting the same problem but worse! On top of the warnings you're getting I get a brake light warning, the trouble is it doesn't go away until you switch the engine off, it just stays flashing on the display and no other warnings overide it! Today while I was investigating I accidentally left the lights on and I could hear a loud buzzing coming from the car, when i investigated it turned out to be the left headlight adjuster so I disconnected it (bitch to disconnect) and my brake warning hasn't happend (yet) but the dip beam and plate light warning is still there so I will disconnect the other motor later.

Could my brake light warning be caused by the same thing? It only happens when the headlights lights are on and it seems to be worse when its wet or cold, if the car is warmed up it doesn't happen (e.g. if I stop after a run and turn car back on again), also sometimes the message is triggered by pressing the brake while my indicator is on, other times its as soon as I press the brake the first time.

[sal_park]

I've got the same warning messages as described above. In my case it's normally dipped beam, number plate light, side light and sometimes (although much rarer) 1 brake light. Every time I get these warning the lights are always fine and it pretty much always happens when the outside temp is cold and the car has been sitting over night. It didn't happen this morning (UK - not cold enough I guess) and I'm 99% when we get into spring/summer I won't see the error again until it gets cold again.

Given these are warnings for the rear and front lights I don't think it's a break in the wiring loom to the lights on the boot lid (fix is documented on bmwE34.net I think)

I've taken out the CCM and checked the resistance of all resistors and could not find any issue. I too would really like to get this fixed, so if we can pull our collective heads together we might just crack it :)


How to fix it
------------

I think what we need to do is get as much evidence for what causes it as possible. So far we have:

Multiple different warnings:

dipped beam
number plate light
side light
1 brake light
OBC Rear (Bo525i - can you clarify - what is displayed on the dash?)

Seems to happen when the weather is cold:

(Has anyone seen this happen in hot / not cold weather (>10C / 50F) ? )

[Bo525i]

Multiple different warnings:

dipped beam
number plate light
side light
1 brake light
OBC Rear (Bo525i - can you clarify - what is displayed on the dash?)

Seems to happen when the weather is cold:

(Has anyone seen this happen in hot / not cold weather (>10C / 50F) ? )

Taillight warning (or when I set it to german for kix: rücklicht..)and it does this together with the licenseplate (kennzeichenlicht) warning no matter what weather, hot or cold, summer or winter!

[leicesterboy15]

The brake warning I get is not for 1 brake light (although this occasionally happens), the error seems to be for a total brake light failure as it just flashes away on the dash for the whole journey - I am assuming this is because it thinks both brake lights are out.

I also didn't get errors this morning but suspect that it wasn't cold or wet enough.