Parking brake behaving weird...

Mar 20, 2005 5 Replies

The parking brake on my '86 BMW 323 seems to have life of its own. Sometimes when driving it will engage very briefly by itself. This usually happens when rolling slowly, like towards a traffic light or whatever... Also, when I pull the parking brake the car rolls forward a couple of inches before it stops, and it only works on my right tire. I'll have a look at it when switching to summer tires, but I'm curious if anyone have had the same thing happening to them.



Thanks,



Ulf


When you say it engages, do you mean literally applies braking? Or just the light coming on?

One side vs the other -- one side is out of adjustement. Drum rear or disc rear main brake on that one?

-Russ.

No, it actually brakes. The first couple of times it happened I thought I ran over something, but it didn't make sense since it was only the rear wheel. The light never comes on.

Discs front and rear.

Ulf

Ok, you need to take the disc off and have a look in there, likely a broken spring or the anti-rattle pin is loose and jamming it sometimes. You can purchase the guts as a kit, may as well just do both sides while you have it off. You can just unhook and hang the caliper on something solid so you don't have to bleed anything.

-Russ.

I agree. There is something in the linkage that is broken - at worst - or out of adjustment. The clue will be inside the brakes themselves, or in the cabling that links them to the brake handle inside the car.

Thanks, I appreciate your help. I'll take a look at it when it gets warmer. With inspection only a month away I'll see if I can get the parking brake to work on both wheels too, not that that gave me any problems last year...

Ulf

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