How to Adjust Parking Brake 2004-13 BMW 325 Ci

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

Hey everyone, Sue here from 1A Auto. Today, on our '06 BMW 325Ci, I'm gonna show you how to adjust your rear disc parking brake. If you need any parts for your car, click on the link below, and head on over to 1aauto.com. I'm gonna break our wheel studs free and it's a 17 millimeter. Start at the bottom.

Just going to break them free. Then, lift it up on my two post lift. You can use a jack and jack stands at home if you need to. Now that my car is up in the air, I'm just going to take off the lug studs the rest of the way. In this situation where the tire is stuck on there really good, I'm gonna reinstall one of my wheel studs.

Then, I'm going to take a rubber mallet and I'm going to hit the back side of the tire. There you go. I hit the tire on the backside with the rubber mallet. I use a rubber mallet in case I miss and hit the aluminum rim. That's not something you want to do. Now, we're gonna remove the caliper slider covers.

There's two covers back here. The top one. Now, that's an Allen head in there. It's a number seven, size number seven Allen head. Break that free. I'm going to break both of them free. Now, I'm going to do it by hand.

I don't need the ratchet. There's also, before you take this caliper off, there is an anti-rattle clip in the front part of the caliper. You'll see it on the face of the rotor face side. That's the slider. That's what the slider pin looks like. There's the Allen head.

These will get cleaned up before installation. Remove the top one. I can see the dirt on those. They just get hardened up, the caliper grease hardens up, and it limits the sliding part of it. That's what it will do inside that boot. It will slide under pressure which it's supposed to do.

Now, I'm going to just take my pry bar and slide this caliper right off. The inner pad and the outer pad will come with it on this BMW. Now, we're going to take the caliper bracket off of the knuckle in a 16 millimeter socket. Normally, I would hold this caliper up because I don't like to put pressure on the flex hose, but this is a very firm flex hose and it's not really dangling too much, so I wouldn't worry about that. Let's take that bracket off with that 16 millimeter.

Let's see if I can. Here we go. Perfect. This is a really rather easy brake job to do. It's something to have fun with, and enjoy yourself, and you can have a little self pride to say you've done it. We're going to clean this bracket up and I'll show you how to do that. I'm just going to break that free.

You can see some corrosion build up where the brake rotor meet the knuckle. We're just going to spray that down a little rust penetrant and let it sit. I'm going to hit on the hat of the rotor. That's where all the rust is and I want to break that up. There we go. Here, we have exposed our e-brake shoes.

We're going to give it a good exam and make sure that they're in good shape. These look fairly new, there's a nice thickness to them. You can see there's no hairline cracks or heat cracks. The bonding is not coming undone. These are things you want to look for.

If the glue was coming undone, you would be able to shift the brake pad lining off of the metal backing. Yeah, we don't have that case. These are in great shape. I'll just clean it up with some brake clean and we'll reassemble our brakes. I'm going to take a wire brush.

This is an actual brass brush. I'm just going to clean up the hub and get rid of that rust lit. Let's get rid of the brake dust. Let that dry. I'm going to coat the hub with a little bit of high temp anti seize.

I just want to put a thin coat. I'll put the majority of it right where it meets where that rust lip forms. To adjust the e-brakes on this 325CI BMW, you take your rotor, and you look at your shoes, and the e brake adjuster right here. It has a star adjuster to it. You can see which way to go by ...

You see the threads obviously gain space and pull out, then we know we were making it tighter. The other way would be to close it in. There's no back window, so you have to take the rotor off to do this. I handle a couple of clicks at a time. Then, I'm going to put the rotor on.

See what it feels like on the actual hub, the hat. It's fine. It's still loose, so I can keep adjusting this. I just want to feel a slight drag. That's too tight. That's a good way to show you what too tight is. Now, we'll back it off. Just going to bring it in here. I'm going to go a couple more clicks up.

Too tight. There we go. Perfect. If I hit my hands and hold it flush on that hub, I can feel a slight drag. Nothing severe, that's what we want. Now, I'm going to line up that mounting hole with a screw and install. The bolt, start it by hand. That was the six millimeter Allen head.

It only has to be really snug, so I'll just give it a quick little taunt. Now, we're ready to install our caliper bracket. Just line the bracket right up with the ears on that knuckle. Put your bolts right through. I'm just going to snug these by hand.

Then, I'm going to torque them down to manufacturers spec. With our 16 millimeter socket, I'm going to torque these caliper to knuckle bolts 49 foot pounds. Now, I'm gonna bring the caliper up, going to line it right up, and slide her in. Just keep an eye on your sliders, the bolt sliders. Sometimes, it'll go in.

There we go. You hear the threads line up. That was our seven millimeter Allen head, number seven. Start that by hand. Find it, there it is. Going to get the top one started. Now, I'm going to torque the caliper to caliper bracket. It's 22 foot pounds.

Now, I'm ready to install my dust covers on those caliper sliders. Okay. Now, we're free to let go. That's all the other wheel studs. Going to torque the wheel down. The manufacturers specs is 78 to 98 foot pounds. It's a 17 millimeter socket. Torque in a star pattern. You just double check it.

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