Subject: <E34> Headlights going out

> My '91 525i headlights only go out periodically as I am
> driving down the road. Seems to be no consistentcy
> to it. They will either come back on themselves within 5
> to 20 seconds or I can flick the highbeams several
> times and make them come back on. Anyone had this problem?

My 2 cents--it was the LCM on my 89 525i that caused my driver side low beam to visit me when it wanted to. BTW, all your lights are controlled by this little Hella circuit card. I had the car going in for an inspection anyway, so i asked them to look at the lo beam problem too. They resoldered the legs of all the relays (charged me $50 labor) and it worked great for about 2 weeks, then same thing again. This time i checked it out myself...it looked like Ray Charles did the soldering. I removed the globs and re-soldered it. I also put a small wedge of foam rubber on the edge of the circuit card since i believe it's the constant vibration of this card in its little plastic box that causes the solder to crack. Anyway, it's been almost 2 years without an LCM problem. And no, i didn't get my $50 back....yet.

Roger:

I had exactly the same problem with my 89 525iA. It turned out that the soldering had cracked at the control unit and it was a minor job for my shop to re-solder the connections. That was about two years ago with no problems since.

Fred Meloan