Attention: ALL E36 owners beware - WIRING PROBLEM

[JohnnypE36]

For all of you planks that gave saltshaker a hard time take a look below at my E26 320 coupe,

Its lucky I was parking up or I'd have been in it!

people really should take this problem seriously!

[kylek325i]

This is a real problem!! I had the tail light/ lic plate light/ interior light/ door lock fuse problems too. First time I checked I didnt look all the way down in the wiring shroud. Second time I knew something was up so I cut the shroud and found most of the wires COMPLETELY broken right where they all bend when the trunk closes. Fixed em and now all is good. Everyone check for this though!

[joe94dually]

When did they upgrade the wiring harness or wires?

[AlpineSixAndSeven]

^ kill the spammer!!!!!
edit: spammer gone

[eurospec325i]

thanks for the info i check out my 325i and all checked out fine..

[nnamdi]

thanks speed. checking out this weekend. Pswirley, that ride of yours makes me think happy thoughts, takes me to a place where the road is smooth, wide and lots of cars to overtake; Paradise!! lol

[DTMdrft]

regardless of the downloadable reading material mentioned above... I agree on the site's (bimmerwerkz) usefullness! I just purchased a '95 325i and decided to check out my trunk wires... EVERY SINGLE WIRE was worn in half! so I replaced all the wiring in the trunk lid and about a foot into the left quarter... I don't want a crispy bmw.

Thanks for the heads up BIMMERWERKZ

[Dizzyvin]

Guys, kinda new here and am in need of a little help. Any help is greatly appreciated. Well i have a 2004 325CI, its a wonderful car, but am expieriencing a problem. My interior dome light which turns on all tha interior lighting keeps coming on, and this gets annoying. Does anyone kno the problem??? i keep switching it off, but seconds later sometimes minutes later it will come back on. Any help is appreciated, thank you!!

[318kid]

would this eventually happen to my ti compact too?? you dont see much Ti's on this forum :P but im sure everyone on 318ti.org has read bout this too.

[318kid]

nevermind my stupidity. i just looked at my car i have the same wiring running around my hatch and the tubing is flattened which cant be good, ill probably check it out later this week after i go get the car inspected and registered.

[jungle]

Originally Posted by JohnnypE36

For all of you planks that gave saltshaker a hard time take a look below at my E26 320 coupe,

Its lucky I was parking up or I'd have been in it!

people really should take this problem seriously!

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After reading this thread, I will aslo be checking the harness in the boot and rewiring it on a different route or getting it replaced.....

[PulgaLouka]

I will go and check my wiring today, good to know. this can be very serius if a spark starts and can realy start a fire. thanks for the info man

[wernermeister]

Originally Posted by PulgaLouka

I will go and check my wiring today, good to know. this can be very serius if a spark starts and can realy start a fire. thanks for the info man

I can only encourage EVERYBODY with an older E36 to do this. I just bought a 1994 BMW325i, and started reading on this site.
However, I did not "feel" like cutting into that beautiful rubber-insulated piece between the opening in the rear end an the trunk lid.

However, I noticed one of my license plate lights was out.... bulb OK, measured for voltage, none.
Now it got interesting. Looking at this thread, I decided to rub the insulation of that wire before that nice rubber piece inside the driver side trunk, and there was voltage there.

I immediately started checking I found out it is actually several piece rubber insulation connectors; after pulling from the top end down, I saw the problems:
1 wire completely cut
2 larger ones (blue and white) about to be cut; just hanging on threads
several of the smaller wires had burn marks and were exposing the copper




Happy hunting

I would really want to exchange that entire wiring loom; however, I can not seem to remove the plastic cover inside the trunk (like 4 black plastic push-in lock buttons....
Any help/ideas about this?

Thanks for making us aware of this issue, and for making it "sticky" so it's easy to find for the noob's in the BMW world!

[johnf]

Do you really need to replace the trunk lid to trunk cable that far into the trunk? I just spliced new wiring from inside the trunk lid to the trunk left wall near the left tail light:



You can see the white heatshrink over my splices as the wiring apexes along the top right.

[witeshark]

That looks like very nice work, John.