E46 325Ci LED tailights - replace LED's

[Christ29]

Hi guys

I have 6 LED's that are burnt out on my left tail-light (on the facelight 325Ci). Now BMW say i cannot replace those individual LED's and have to replace the entire light unit, which cost R4100 fitted. Now there has to be another way to replace these 6 LED's as theres no ways that you have to replace the entire light just to get those LED's working again. if anyone can advise, will be much appreciated!

thank you.

 

[msm]

Don't have experience with this, but have you tried dismantling the light. If you can get to the LED's, just check what type they are and pop into your nearest electronic store for a replacement.

Might involve a bit of soldering, but I'm sure it could be done easily ...

 

[Sankekur]

Yup, your best bet would be to take the light apart solder out the LEDs get replacement ones and solder them back in, don't know how easy it would be, if it is surface mounted it might be really difficult to do this (still possible though)

 

[menno11]

Dont think that you could have exceeded the lifespan of the LED's. My thoughts would be that the solder connection has been lost. Thus I agree with the rest that you should open the light and check the connections. Hopefully you can just re-connect the LED's that are out.

 

[frikkieh]

Hi guys

I have 6 LED's that are burnt out on my left tail-light (on the facelight 325Ci). Now BMW say i cannot replace those individual LED's and have to replace the entire light unit, which cost R4100 fitted. Now there has to be another way to replace these 6 LED's as theres no ways that you have to replace the entire light just to get those LED's working again. if anyone can advise, will be much appreciated!

thank you.

Hi, I agree with menno11. Usually those LED's are super bright white LED's with a maximum forward voltage no more that 4Volts. If this is exceeded, they will go - sooner or later. Trouble is that all clear white LED's look the same and it is not easy to determine the brightness (if you want it uniform again it has to be the same as the replaced parts), so you may have to end up replacing the lot. Try to establish why they popped - bad track on the PCB? Measure the FWD voltages. They are normally connected in an array. Perhaps this answers a few questions about LED's. Use the LED calculator to see if the replacement LED's will work (depending on the array design of course).

 

[Sankekur]

It might be as simple as a problem with the soldering on the PCB's, but there larger number other other reasons why LED's would fail, problems with the doping, bad alloying of the bonding wires, etc.

Theoretically solid state devices should have a very long life, but unfortunately this is not the case as. In the end they are just have moving part like a mechanical system, just on a quantum level.

I can't really see why the forward voltage would increase if there was at least some form of current controlling resistor.

 

[frikkieh]

It might be as simple as a problem with the soldering on the PCB's, but there larger number other other reasons why LED's would fail, problems with the doping, bad alloying of the bonding wires, etc.

Theoretically solid state devices should have a very long life, but unfortunately this is not the case as. In the end they are just have moving part like a mechanical system, just on a quantum level.

I can't really see why the forward voltage would increase if there was at least some form of current controlling resistor.

And if the resistor is tata?

 

[Sankekur]

That could be possible, but resistors don't fail that easily unless you actually try to do it, in my experience of course.

I had resistors catch fire with the resistance being higher afterwards, or they just complete burn out (open circuit) but that should be easy enough to fix.

Anyhow at a dealer price of over R4k I think trying to fix this probably the best option, or aftermarket replacement.

 

[Christ29]

thanks guys...i will take it apart this weekend and check it out. But after what was said here, i think i should be able to repair those LED's. Replacing the entire unit just doesnt make sense.

thanks again!!