Bulb replacement

[robocal]

Started the car yesterday and the check control came up with an alternating message :

CHECK BRAKE LIGHTS
CHECK PARK LIGHTS

On further investigation found the combined brake/park light in the right rear cluster was not working. In the owner's manual p.161 it is the light described by 5/2. Only problem is when it comes to giving details of what bulbs are needed it says

Tail light 2 : 21/5 Watt bulb
Other lights :21 Watt bulb

As this is both 5 and 2 combined what do I need to replace it ?

Sorry if this is a silly question but car mechanics are definitely not my strong point !!

[Zulu95]

Pop the bulb out and take it along to your local parts store.

[robocal]

Remember I said mechanics are not my strong point ...point in fact I just tried to remove the bulb and it's only fallen into the rear light cluster !! Any ideas on how to get it out .

[X5Flyboy]

Can't help with the bulb extraction problem (my excuse is I'm too lazy, been there, done that on my earlier cars/trucks) - BUT I can suggest once you are into it, that you may want to replace all the bulbs and check out the sockets, especially if you have ~50K miles on your X5 - My winter trip back east I hit 53K and started replacing bulbs ( rt headlight, lf frt directional, license plate light assy, both fog lights, at different times) and when "CHECK TAILIGHT" came up I threw up my hands and told the dealer to replace them all (+2 bad sockets). All this happened within 3000 miles of driving (4 weeks). By this time the dealer took pity on me and only charged me only for the bulbs and sockets.

[Zulu95]

Something sticky on the end of a piece of a piece of wood.

[robocal]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Luckily here in Hong Kong the mileage is fairly low on all cars. On my 2002 it is just coming up on only 20,000miles so hopefully will not have a reapeat of the problem you had Burkleymh for a long time yet.

In the end I decided to call in the professionals. Brought it to the BMW service station. They made me feel a little better as this car has a subwoofer fitted right in front of the rear light cluster on the inside which makes it diffiult to work on. They must have spent 30mins trying to get everything out before they could remove the rear cluster and retireve the bulb. When all was said and done the total charge was HK$20, about US$ 3 for the bulb. The rest of the work they said was on the house !! What a result !!