Hey all,
on my 2013 R56 both of the rear lights are having issues. Just the bottom lights work when the brake pedal is pressed. The middle blinkers work fine as well. The upper bulb is not turning on when I press the brake. Im able to unscrew the carriers without issues, so they are not melted. I checked the prongs on the sockets and they're good. I already pulled everything out and tested with a meter. The bulbs are good, but no power is being given by the circuit. I checked up to the plug and there's no power for the wires that feed that bulb. What else can I check?

 

FYI - Same thing happened to my 2009 MCS. Bulb in upper-rear of light housing would not work. I traced issue to board that bulb-socket is in. I bought a complete used rear light assembly off eBay, just so I could get the board. Swapped board into my housing and no more issue.

 

I dont know if the r56 with JCW is a different design or not, but the top and bottom bulbs are not connected to the same wire on the plug. The top bulb is connected to pin 3 and the bottom bulb is connected to pin 1. Why they are not running from the same wire I have no clue. What I do know is that they dont have a board on the unit, the only board there is for the LED tail lights. There's no power on pin 3 so the problem comes from somewhere else.

 

Ok, I was able to find a bit more info. It looks like my problem might be coming from the footwell module (A4011). Specifically from pins 43 and 9 on the port X14261. Anyone have an idea of what the issue might be? Do I need a new module?

 

FWIW - What I refereed to at, "the board" is what you're holding in your left hand. The "thing" that the individual bulb-sockets twist into. I'd suggest you replace that entire "thing" before assuming issue is upstream from the actual light housing...

Good luck!

 

If it's the same as the earlier R 53 cars, the top bulb is one of 3 things:
1 - installed but not working
2 - a brake light
3 - an optional rear fog light if you have the right switch panel & programming.
If you don't have the optional rear fog, you can add a jumper to make it a brake light. Photo hopefully attached. Wiring colors may differ.
There must be 20 different MINI rear light units & they are not all interchangeable - it depends on the year, model, options & country which one is correct for your car.
There are several other threads on this.

 

Thank you so much for your reply my friend. Unfortunately Im not assuming anything. I have a good background on electronics engineering and the tests I have done here are very basic and I can tell you for a fact that the problem is not on the housing itself. The housing itself doesn't have any smart components that can go bad. The connections there are pretty straight forward, if there's no power on pin 3 there's no way that bulb will turn on, not even with a brand new light housing.
This car got DLRs installed which require to tap into one of the leads in the footwell module. Im thinking that something might have happened that messed up something in the module. I will also check the configuration with the Carly app in case anything was coded and its now preventing those two lights from turning on. If I can't find anything I will jump the connections to run power from the bottom bulb to that top one. I will cut the cable going to pin 3 just to prevent any power going back to the module. I will also use LED bulbs to prevent extra current from being over drawn from the same wire :D
Again, thank you so much for your help, its really appreciated.

 

Exactly! Thank you! I will have to check the programming to make sure everything is programmed correctly before I do the jump. If nothing changes with the programming I will make the jumper and use LED bulbs.

 

asainz320:

Thank you for the kind reply and not bashing me for implying you are making assumptions! Please know that my intent was only to help. After re-reading my above reply, you are correct that I should not have used the word "assume". In any case, good luck on your fix and let us know how you make out.

 

I know my friend dont worry ha ha! I know we're here trying to help each other out, thats why I said that I appreciate your reply because not everyone takes the time to reply to others

 

Good!
Just be sure to use canbus bulbs or they will flicker at startup. Use red behind red lenses, amber behind amber or you'll get pink & lemon!
Check first, but I think this is what you need:
Top bulb = 1156
Directional bulb = 7507
Stop/tail = 1157
Plenty available from China in a couple of weeks - get extras.

Please let us know if you find a way to turn the startup bulb check off unless there's an LED lighting option on the 2013 cars.

 

Great info! Thank you so much for sharing!
One question, Why the the top bulb different from the bottom bulb. On my current setup they're the same, the bottom bulb socket doesn't support dual filament bulbs. Thats why I was saying that I dont know if the JCW lights are different than regular S.

 

[QUOTE=asainz320;4517888]Great info! Thank you so much for sharing!
One question, Why is the top bulb different from the bottom bulb. On my current setup, they're the same, the bottom bulb socket doesn't support dual filament bulbs. That's why I was saying that I don't know if the JCW lights are different than regular S.[/QUOTE

... hence my comment about many different rear light units!
So where are your side lights? A photo of the rear of the car might help.
I suspect you may have the wrong bulb in there - it's possible to fit the single filament 1156 into a dual-filament 1157 socket, though not easy.
Please check again. If the single filament base shorts out the two dual-filament contacts, that may be why the top bulbs don't work.

 

[QUOTE=MVPeters;4517889]I will check again, but the socket would have more than two prongs making contact with the housing correct? Also the housing would have extra tracks leading to those extra prongs. On the picture I attached you can see that all three bulb carriers are the same, with the same two prongs. I will attach a pic of the car.

 

Are you aware of the melting bulb socket issue of the R56? It was the reason the upper half break lights of my R56 LCI stopped working. Initially I thought that the bulbs had blown. In order to get them out I had to cut some of the melted plastic. However, more plastic had to be cut so that the bulbs could reach the socket's contacts. In the end, it turnded out that the old bulbs were still fine.
More info here:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...il-lights.html
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-t-remove.html

 

This is the car

 

Thank you for the references.
Yes I am aware of the melting issue, thats why I mentioned in the op that mine were not melted lol. Also the bulbs are fine since I tested them with the multi meter and placing them in other sockets makes them light up as well.
Im leaning more towards a programming issue or just a bad footwell module.

 

Jeez, this is embarassing...
I promise to re-read all posts twice before responding in the future.
:-)

 

na its cool man, like that other people looking for this issue will have more info in the same thread

 

Thanks for the photo.
I would say the lights 'should' be:
Bottom left - reflector or rear fog if you have that option & bottom right = reversing
Then side & brake light
Then yellow directional
Then, top - maybe - additional brake light.
When you refer to contacts, do you mean the 'pins' that stick out of the side of the bulbs or the contacts on the back of the circuit board?
See if this diagram helps: I believe there should be three different bulbs.
Edit - minor correction - if your directionals are red, then the bulb is a clear 1156, not the yellow 7507.

 

What i mean is that the bulb carriers only have two prongs that make contact with the circuit on the light housing. I have attached a pic showing the connection points. I have checked the bulbs and they are all the same and the sockets too. In my case the directional or blinker light is red as well and not amber in like other lights I have seen. I took a look at the programming but Im not really sure of what Im looking at lol. I did see the option to turn off the voltage check so I should be fine using LED bulbs now. I already ordered red ones like you mentioned. I will let you know how that goes. Im leaving out of town early tomorrow so I will not be able to work on this till Monday when I come back.

 

For your reading pleasure, I found another thread on this topic! It's getting complicated!
https://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/
Caution - it's an old & rather confusing thread, but - it seems that some cars do indeed have 3 identical bulbs in the rear units.
It seems that reduced voltage, or 'pulsing', provides the 5W sidelight function in the single filament 21W bulb. Braking provides the full 21W brightness.

Note that the car referenced apparently has the sidelights at the top & yellow directionals.
I also think the reference to 5W rear fog lights down in the bumper is incorrect, they would be too dim for that purpose. So I'm not so sure that the .PDF is entirely accurate.
This doesn't resolve your initial problem, but it might explain why all 3 bulbs are the same.

 

Looks like you copied the wrong url lol. Its just a link for the forums.
Thank you for the continued searching of this issue, its much appreciated.

 

OOps!

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...b-types-2.html

I'll be intrigued to see the outcome!

 

Im not going to go crazy looking for any more answers. I will just bridge the bottom bulb to the top one and will remove the wire on pin 3 to avoid any power feedback to the system.