"Tail Light Failure" on obc with OEM taillights..

[Manny G.]

Ok, i had those RICEY crystal E38 looking taillights on for a while and decided to chuck'em. So, i got an OEM set of euro taillights with check control ( i 'm pretty sure they have check control ).

Anyway,
i keep getting this tail light failure on the obc, even though all the lights seem to be working.

HOWEVER,
there are 2 brake lights that are supposed to light up when the brake is pressed.. the inner one which is a single filament, and the outer one which is a dual filament. the single filament seems to light up fine, but the outer dual filament doent look like it lights up when the brake is pushed, only when the lights are on.

i was told to see something about a rear fog light? i dont know anything about the rear fog lights for e36's though. does anybody know how to fix this?

Thanks

[Moriar]

rear fog light??? that would blind the shit outta someone hehe... imo

umm, disconnect the battery, then wait 15 minutes, then reconnect it, try to see if that fixe's it, if not, then prolly that bulb ur talkin about is bad and needs replacing

[Scho]

Check the contacts. Mine did this, and simply pulling the bulb, scrubbing the contacts, and reinstalling the bulb worked.

[Polo M3]

Yeah as SCHO said, move some of the contacts around and you should be fine. Im not sure about the brake lights though, mine are only driving lights on the outsides, and the insides are the actual brake lights.

The Rear Fog BTW is just a brighter red light which you can turn on during inclement weather allowing others to see you better through fog. I know Audi has this, but I don't think that E36's do.

[Manny G.]

yea e36's have the rear fog light in europe..

i discovered that the outer brake light that is dual filament doesnt even light up when the brake is pushed at all. i tried pulling up the prong contacts but still nothing. I'm going to take the light off tomorrow and check it out thoroughly to see why it isnt lighting up.

[Manny G.]

here's how to add the rear fog lights to e36's

e36 rear fog light install

[Kyle M]

Thats not a bad write up, but if I did it I would want the light in the cluster for the rear fog light, and that is hard to find

[Manny G.]

i saw a write up about the cluster light too, but the US cluster has the icon blacked out, you would need a euro cluster

[Manny G.]

i think i figured out the problem..

on the socket for the tail lights, there are 8 pins.. it looks like this

5-o o-1
6-o o-2
7-o o-3
8-o o-4


and on the harness from the car the plug looks like this:

o
o o
o o
o o

i dont know the numbering order, but by the layout of the contacts on the back of the tail light, it looks like the contact that turns on the brighter filament of the outer brake light doesnt have a pin to connect to from the car's harness.

what i cant figure out though is why it trips off the OBC if there's no pin in the harness to begin with?

these are OEM BMW euro tail lights by the way.. go figure

[gooten1]

the rear fog light came on when the foglights were turned on, i believe. On most other makes, foglights and tail lights were not connected, meanin you could see in front of you, but no one could see the back of your car in the dark.

[Manny G.]

well i fixed the problem from coming back up on the OBC

and i turned on the rear fog light too

after studying all the diagrams of the pinouts.. i noticed that the OEM taillights i bought.. had a pin missing ON THE TAIL LIGHT for the outer tail light... but a connector on the harness from the car.

i had an older set of tail lights laying around, so i began pulling off the metal contact sheets from the tail light, and swapped them with the ones on the new OEM tail lights.

however, this still left the fog light disabled cause there was no connector on the harness. the OEM tail light that was missing a pin was bridged from the contact metal that powered on the middle tail light.. thus turning on the outer tail light's lower filament ( brighter filament is the fog light). go figure... OEM shit

anyway, i just bridged the outer tail light to the rear fog light contact sheet and VIOLA!.. rear fog light. i figure.. why go through a long drawn out installation of the switch if i'm going to have that rear fog light on all the time anyway.. hell, im not gonna spend all that time and effort to have it off!

[NiTE]

Why would you want your rear fog lights on all the time? It's not all that necessary and it just aggravates other drivers.

[Manny G.]

Originally posted by NiTE
Why would you want your rear fog lights on all the time? It's not all that necessary and it just aggravates other drivers.

so? other drivers aggravate me too lol

trust me, i dont let people follow me for long

if u saw the instructions for adding rear fogs to a US spec e36... you'd leave them on all the time just because of all the work and effort u put into them

[rmani]

Hey Manny G. I'm having the same problem as you. I went and checked my lights and I actually have more pins than metal contacts. I tried using electrical tape to cover the excess pins to make it identical to my stock lights but the problem still persists! HELP!

[Tom!]

I had the same problem with my OEM tail lights. Even after I plugged the original tail lights back in I still get TLF messages. I also get LBF errors with my ZKW's and halogen lights.

I swear, sometimes I just wanna rip the check control unit out.