The fog light switch in my 740 suddenly locked up and refused to actuate a few years ago. Because it's never very foggy, and for a while I had a modern car that I drove when the weather was ill, I put "new switch" on the list of parts to accumulate, and then stopped thinking about it. But, I recently had the opportunity to re-fix the clutch pedal that broke so long ago, and while I had the dash apart, I thought, "Why not".
The obvious answer being that 30 year old plastic is fragile and snaps at the slightest hint of stress. Kind of like me.
Switch slides out.
Switch comes apart by pressing in 4 tabs around the back. The switch action is a metal finger with a spring inside of a post.
The back half of the switch. Has the light bulb and the contacts. The mechanism sea-saws to open and close the contacts.
The reason the switch was stiff is that the grease inside the post had hardened and prevented the spring from compressing. Additionally, it seemed like the finger had oxidized a bit and expanded inside the post. I removed the grease, sanded the finger so it moved in the post freely, and then added new silicone grease.
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