I ended up butt splicing the two broken wires and taping up the two exposed ones. I then electrical taped the wires, slid the loom back through the tube, reconnected everything and now all is well.

Right license plate notification is back but comes and goes. Notification says the light is out but I clearly see that it is on. I noticed the bulb had a dark spot on it and so I replaced the bulb and the notification went away but came back later. I think I may have a poor connecting butt crimp.

I didn't tin the wires only because I don't have a portable soldering iron or any place to plug one in. Its not as bad as it was before because the light is still on even though the notification is still present.

Would an exposed wire stop the trunk opening?
 

Hi guys,
Opened the trunk yesterday via the trunk button, closed it, then opened the hood to blow out leaves that had accumulated under there, closed the hood, went back to open the trunk and it wouldn't open either via the trunk button itself or the button ilnear the driver foot well. I would imagine blowing the leaves from the engine bay is entirely coincidental, can't think of anything that could be upset there that would impact the trunk. So, I checked the fuses visually and the appear good, I then removed the tape around the loom and found that near the trunk hinge the brown and yellow wires were not broken but were exposed, is it possible that this could cause a problem? Didn't see any other broken wires? Any other ideas on what to check?

Thanks a lot,
David (2008 e60 550i)
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/5series...3792ac99e6.jpg

Very common problem. Yes, it is most likely your issue.

Go to the forum sticky here:
https://5series.net/forums/e60-discu...-begin-148359/

Read the PDF..."So you just bought..."

Thanks for the response and the link, I did read through and found the links to the e61 tailgate fix pdfs, I must admit I didn't read all the details in there yet but it seems like the consensus is that the exposed wires should be cut and reconnected. I must admit though I am surprised that an exposed wire would cause this issue, do you think this is the case? Would rather not cut the existing wires unless absolutely necessary. Also, the trunk interior lights are also not working! Thanks again, David

(08 550i, 75K miles)

What happened is some attempts were made to use insulation that was more environmentally friendly. That resulted in a couple major headaches. One is the wiring inside the headlights. It is known to flake off and cause issues. The other is the repeated flexing of the trunk and wagon liftgate wiring harness.

If the wires are shorting out they aren't going to work. You may not even see all the broken wires as some may have broken inside the insulation from flexing. Think about an electrical cord where you wiggle it and it works -- same thing.

If you intend to keep the car, what you should do is replace the entire wiring harness segment that goes down the trunk lid hinge. This would necessitate a lot of soldering and heat shrink tubing. I do think there are companies selling wiring sets that have silicone insulation. Silicone insulation remains flexible. If you just want to deal with it as it comes, fix those segments that are having issues.

One more thing to be aware of. This car has some fancy electrical fault protection. If the car electronics detect a short to ground, as in too much current, the car will temporarily shut off that circuit. It does this a few times and then decides this is a permanent problem and shuts off that circuit permanently. So, even if you fix the issue, it won't work. I know for sure the car does this on the tail lights. You will have to get one of the BMW OBD tools and go in and find the circuit and reset the short circuit counter for that circuit to become active again.

Thanks again for your advice. Update; so I haven't actually driven the car in a couple of weeks until today and noticed that the windshield washer/jets and interior lights are now also not working, I also noted that when the car is locked if I press the trunk button then the start/stop button illuminates. I used my Foxwell scanner and noted the codes in the image attached, I suspect that I may have a bad KBM/BCM module, not sure what the best course of action to confirm this is though, will maybe post it off to one of those testing/repair services, reasonable next step do you think?
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/5series...066f9c30f7.jpg

Actually, now I am wondering if I did upset some connection with the leaf blower around the engine bay, there were lots of leaves stuck around the area where the ivm module is housed, had a fair amount of air blowing in that area. Hmmm.

Did you also use a hose?

Nope just one of those Ryobi leaf blowers, they are pretty powerful though, going to pull apart the area on the passenger side with the electronics (ivm module etc) and make sure everything is connected properly.