Bwahhaahhaa. Did they fail open or fail closed?


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both. sometimes it will unlock all then when you go to lock it wont lock the back doors but it will think its locked and set the alarm off if you open the "unlocked" door. or it will fail locked and never unlock the rear doors or the lower hatch.

Lower hatch? No lock on lower hatch. Not familiar with tailgate DLA failing being common. I've rebuilt one from a 2004 though where soft close failed. I rebuilt it to be regular close as the part was over $400!

slight odd update. have a appointment with the bmw shop to disable the one press unlock and go back to factory to make sure thats not the issue. wont be for another week though. however last night my wife and i were sitting on the tailgate (i have been manually releasing the lower gate latch) and out of no where the rear hatch lights kicked on. after that happened the lower gate was working with the button along with the rear doors locking/unlocking. so now it seems i may possibly have a pinch wire somewhere in the lower gate or something along the lines of that, that when we were both sitting on it it may have moved the harness enough to reenable. which would explain the randomness of the problem could be breaking and fixing itself over bumps. something i will have to deep dive later this week

There's a wire loom goes through. I forget what's all powered on the lower tailgate but if the button shorts the brain will deactivated it. I had that happen with the upper tailgate.

BMW eliminated the electric latch on the bottom tailgate in the next model I totally forgot it has a button.

Top right is the rubber corrugated tube for the hatch, look for similar on the bottom. When I cut mine open there were a couple damaged wires. Good chance you have similar going on.

I was able to get my remote button to work if slammed the tailgate as an example.

update for anyone who cares or has a similar issue, still no luck. i have however found a decent work around as a temp/perm fix. with the doors electronically unlocked i unplugged the electric locks to the rear doors and will manually unlock/lock when needed. inconvenient if you have rear passengers but i rarely do so it will work out for me. rear lower hatch will also be unlocked manually. the randomness of when they would work is what is making this difficult to isolate. sometimes it just works no problem, sometimes it only works after manually opening the lower tail gate, sometimes it works after playing wit the rear outside door handle, sometimes it works after mashing the unlock/lock button inside 5 times.

If those locks are controlled by relays in the general module that would be a good suspect.