E34 Electronical Woes

[Digita1 Ecstasy]

bought some clears from a private seller who bought the wrong ones. I wanted to confirm they were the 89-94' lights without the side markers, he confirmed. I installed them today. The rear brake lights do not work, checked the fuses, none melted. The turn signals on them work just fine, I checked the connection and reinstalled the stock lights and they worked fine. Seller said he didnt even take the lights out of the packaging and I believe him based on what I saw. Did I buy faulty lights, or is it possible that the seller mistook these lights as the 94-96' and somehow do not work on my 92' even though they look exactly the same as my stock ones?


my car is a 1992 535i

[632 Regal]

their all the same. You probably have Depos which have very quirky bulb/socket connections. You can check them with a voltmeter to make sure current gets to the socket connection then play with the socket itself. Maybe the old sockets will work in the new ones... all in all I had problems with mine for quite a while then I sanded and applied stabalent 22 and its been fine for almost 6 months now.

good luck

[Yiorgos]

If you have DEPOs (they have a DEPO stamp on the front lower corner) they are a bitch to click in the connectors for the bulbs. This is because on the OEM version there is little 'gives' on the socket of the light cluster that allows your bulb connector to click in. The DEPO doesn't have this. Most people sand this bit down or force the connector in with a shift wrench, but I did something different and used a soldering iron to literally melt a little bit of the corner so that the connector can click in.

Pics to see what I mean (I took these when I first got my DEPOs):
DEPO cluster
BMW cluster
This is the light connector that came with my OEM lights

People also say to spray some stuff on the connectors and such, I haven't done this and my light clusters still work fine after 6 months of using them in my E34.