BMW Repair: E39 wagon turn rear turn signals brake liights individual operation wanted, amber section, mental lapse


Question
I have a 2000 540iT which has all red tail lights so it combines stop and turn functions. I got a set of rear lenses with amber section for the turn signal like used on worlds markets. Can the light control module be programmed by the dealer so the amber section is turn signal only and the red sections are stop only? And running lights only on the red section. This is how the car comes in Europe. This is safer and brighter plus gets me a more Euro look.

Answer
Hello Raul,
Perhaps I am getting confused somewhere. Even if the whole tail light (the ones on the fenders and not the ones on the trunklid) are colored red, the turn signal is still the top bulb (21 watts), and the park/running light (5 W) is separate from the brakelight bulb(21 W).
Is yours different? I have never seen a beemer combine turn and brake functions in one bulb. Brakelight and parklight yes specially in the 740's.
Tino
PS
Sorry for my mental lapse. It has been awhile since I worked on an E39 with red tail lights. But I got to work on one today and you are right. The top and the bottom lights works as both signal and brakelights with the middle as parklights. This is no longer the case with newer E39 T's.
And it is not possible to retrofit a new rear light assembly based on the currently available programs. Whether the wiring has something to do with it is something that I do not know.
While you can manually re-route power to the lamps that you want to light up, check lights would be triggered since the current draws of two 21 watts bulbs (the original setup) can not be achieved by one 21 w bulb (based on what you want).
I suppose that changing the lamp module with the updated one  is not a surefire upgrade since as I have previously said, the wiring may be different.

Tino