2008 E88 tail light issue

[superchunk]

This is my first post, but I want to acknowledge the other posters in this site for any reference to this issue. A while back my tail lights stopped working with the headlights on at night, the dash showed the light globe saying they globes were faulty. I took it to my auto electrician who said that the ECU was sending the message to the lights ok, but the message wasn't getting there and that the FRM was likely the problem: which its not by the way. All the globes were fine, grounded and without water damage and the brake lights, indicators and reverse lights work fine. I rotated the globes without result. I also used the bimmergeek protool to reset the ECU, clear codes etc. The final straw came yesterday when the dealer quoted between 5-10K AUD to check it out, and a mourning period began. Long story short, I had one last go at clearing codes etc, and with the headlights on, starting pressing buttons.....the rear fog lights button turned the tail lights on......the strange thing is I didn't realise that my car had one, and I have a vague notion that the rear fog can be recoded to work as an extra brake light?......either way I didn't conciously do this and the tail lights stopped working without warning in the first place. If anyone has had a similar experience or knows what is going on I'd love to know how this happens and if I can fix it!.......cheers

[JustAnotherSportsCar]

Do most cars in your country have rear fog lights? If not, I know they can be relatively easily added to the 1 Series. Maybe someone added it to yours and messed up the coding.

[superchunk]

Thanks for your reply JASC, I can't disagree with your logic......entirely possible. I think I can switch off the fog light in protool, but I don't know whether it will mess things up again........this has been a problem for so long and this fix was purely accidental. I'm thinking about going back to my auto electrical guy again with the new info to see if they know how to fix it....cheers

[JimD]

I don't know if your tail lights are like my 2009 e88, n52 built to American requirements but I have had to replace both rear tail lights, the entire assembly. I think they have led bulbs but there is a printed circuit board in the housing that is probably the issue. I got the replacements from Parts Geek for about $100 each. This won't fix it if the signal is not reaching the rear lights housing as you seem to describe. If it is a coding problem it probably can be fixed with NCSExpert if you can find a computer it will run on. I used to use it but have not gotten it to run on my more recent laptops.