# BMW E36 320i 1993 Sedan Rear Parcel shelf removal and boot/trunk light addition RHD.



## hoozdman (May 15, 2014)

Usual disclaimers apply and my car and your car may not look exactly the same.

Having never pulled this part of my car apart it took me about 1.5hrs strip down then the small electrical work and only about 20 min to button up.
Yours should be faster with this How To.

So***8230;.I use the trunk/boot of my car often and wanted more lighting in there as it***8217;s quite a big area.

I changed the factory light to a white 18 SMD and while it was brighter it wasn***8217;t enough, so I checked my garage for what I had laying around and found some lights I had intended to use as puddle lights in the mirrors of a car.










The trunk roof lining is bare metal so I looked for existing places to mount them. I couldn***8217;t find one so I started to remove the parcel shelf as I***8217;d need to drill and run wires in that space.

Remove the rear seat back, or in my case fold down your fancy split rear seat.










Remove the side bolsters. At the top of the bolster these pulled out from a large tight metal bracket, they then pulled up from a hook down the bottom.
They were also mounted to the seat at the very bottom ***8211; I didn***8217;t remove them from the seat as I only needed to get to the top rear of the bolster.










Remove the speaker and tail light covers and any plugs or child restraints from the top of the parcel shelf ***8211; also an under view of one of the plugs.



















Remove the push pins on the black fascia panel; these just pull up with a small flat blade










Remove the black fascia panel










Gently pry the parcel shelf up along the whole length of the back seat.
I thought mine was locked in with more clips but it was just jammed in tight ***8211; it pulls out toward the front of the car.
You can see all the moulding under there that it may be stuck to so just take your time.










This may be your last step in YOUR project ***8211; do your work and reverse to install.

I then drilled up from the trunk into the rear parcel shelf, mounted my lights and ran the cable over to the factory light location.
I also drilled up from the factory light into the parcel shelf so the wires could run down into the trunk.










I connected my new wires with the factory and buttoned up.










Here are a couple of pictures at night with no other light around.




























Thanks for reading.

H


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