Hello all. So I'm retrofitting an OEM M sport package to my E61 545i and while doing it, I come across a million little thing which go wrong. At least it's kind of a project car and I enjoy working on it.
To give a full picture, my PDC was not working, so I diagnosed it both with INPA and my ears, found the malfunctioning sensor and replaced it with one I found on ebay. While doing that, I took out the rear lights (for better access when fitting the bumper). I tested the PDC, all works great, but I got error for the rear lights. Sure, they're not plugged in, so of course. But after plugging them back in, I still get the error about rear left light. Everything works, blinker, brake light, driving light, fog light. But still the error. I scanned for codes with INPA, but I only get codes for the adaptive lights (they are malfuntioning for over a year now, but that will be another topic) so I'm a bit lost now. Yes, all works but the constant error message on idrive is annoying.
I might add that the battery charge was very low and I got an error about that too, after charging it overnight, the rear left light error persists.
Did anyone experience something like this before?
Any help appreciated

 

Yep, I had that too. I was getting a right license plate lamp bad, but I clearly saw it was on and working properly. So what gives?

Well what happens is if the bulb is on but drawing too much current, you will get the exact same error. Most likely you just have a bad connection. You can swap the bulb with a bulb from the other side, and if that doesn't fix it, its definitely the connector. Just spray it with some electrical contact cleaner and that should do the trick..

 

Thanks, I'll give it a go. Does that error message 'left rear light failure' point to the rear driving might or to the whole cluster, so I need to swap out all bulbs, one by one?

 

Its just one mini bulb. If you can't tell which one, just swap them all.

 

So, yesterday I connected a battery charger and when I went to check on it today it stated that it’s fully charged. Good. Also, miraculously the rear light error went away. I cues it was related to low battery voltage?

 

If your battery has insufficient voltage, your car will in turn act all kinds of crazy.