M5 Brake System Retrofit on a 525i Highlights

[stilljester]

Below is the highlights of my M5 Brake System Retrofit on a 525i.
(Pursuits be warned on my color choice)

M5 Specific Parts:
Complete Front & Rear M5 Calipers with Clips - [Lower the mileage the better]
Front & Rear M5 Rotors – [Sourced mine from: www.zeckhausen.com]
Front & Rear Pads (Wear Sensor Optional) – [Giving Akebono a try – Sourced off eBay]

Optional items added:
Powder Coating – [Thanks again Steve: www.modshack.info]
Caliper Bushings- [ Turner Motorsports - www.turnermotorsport.com/ ]

Consumables Used:
Brake fluid, Anti-seize, Disc Brake Quiet

Tools: Used:
Reciprocating Saw, Hand Tools, Torque wrench, normal brake swap tools.

Phase 1: Disassembly, Clean & Powdercoat the Calipers




Phase 2: Verification of E-Brake Setup 525i vs. M5 (Both are approx. 185mm)



Phase 3: To allow the M5 Rear Rotors to fit you need to trim the dust shields - I used the old rotor as a guide for the reciprocating saw and cut off the area shown in red.


Trimmed:



Phase 4: To allow the M5 Front Rotors to fit you need to remove part of the dust shields shown inside the yellow box. Just remove the bolts shown circled in red.


Removed:


Phase 5: So far I only have about 200 miles on the setup but the pedal feel is certainly improved. Having used similar caliper bushings on previous cars I’m pleased to see the same results on the BMW. I’ll give the system another couple hundred miles before exercising it with any hard stops but it is finally nice have rotors which will up the space created by the 18” wheels.





Link to Album

[Paintballistic]

cool mod, holy crap you have a lot going on under the hood after i did some research! never the less i like it and good work!

[JackEatsEmoKids]

cool mod, but definitely unnecessary, unless your packing under the hood. never the less i like it and good work!

That wagon has more balls than your car and mine put together!

Looks good man! I might be doing the same upgrade soon. I would perfer to source some Porsche Cayenne calipers for the front and something for the rear too!

[Paintballistic]

That wagon has more balls than your car and mine put together!

Looks good man! I might be doing the same upgrade soon. I would perfer to source some Porsche Cayenne calipers for the front and something for the rear too!

ya i just seen he has a sc b30!

[stilljester]

cool mod, holy crap you have a lot going on under the hood after i did some research! never the less i like it and good work!

Thanks & Yeah I'm running a TS2+ setup now which I'd highly recommend to anyone. The cams are a good time :-)

That wagon has more balls than your car and mine put together!

Looks good man! I might be doing the same upgrade soon. I would perfer to source some Porsche Cayenne calipers for the front and something for the rear too!

Thought about the building a Porsche setup like I did for my Audi which ran 993TT/928GTS calipers...but when I found a great local deal on a set of M5 calipers so I went this way instead. Who knows I still might build a setup for the touring anyways...

[Gumbi4u]

Wow you got them to bolt on?? I have had a hell of a time getting a set of m5 calipers onto a 525. Granted i didnt have the full setup, but did your carriers just bolt on?

[jburnham]

Thanks for the write-up. I see you mention clips - which I presume are the anti-rattle clips. Did you also need new caliper carriers (the other part you powder coated)? Is there a reason you are going easy on them? I thought it was better to bed them when they are freshly installed.

http://www.zeckhausen.com/bedding_in_brakes.htm

[quacktoduck]

makes me want to powder coat my m5 calipers and carriers... i rebuilt my m5 calipers too

[stilljester]

Wow you got them to bolt on?? I have had a hell of a time getting a set of m5 calipers onto a 525. Granted i didnt have the full setup, but did your carriers just bolt on?

Yes, I just trimmed as shown & they bolted right on without any hassles.

Thanks for the write-up. I see you mention clips - which I presume are the anti-rattle clips. Did you also need new caliper carriers (the other part you powder coated)? Is there a reason you are going easy on them? I thought it was better to bed them when they are freshly installed.

http://www.zeckhausen.com/bedding_in_brakes.htm

No modifications; I just used the stock caliper carriers from the M5. Akebono claims no bed-in procedure is necessary but I performed the procedure you noted this morning. Old habits die hard.

[spdygnzlz]

I know this is an old thread...really old but I just did this mod on my '02 525 Touring. Super easy to do, the whole system took me the better part of the afternoon to do but it's really straight forward. I ended up cutting the rear dust shields with shears instead of sawmill (too noisy). Also, I think the rear lines are too short for the M5 caliper since the lines connect perpendicular to the caliper instead of at an up angle of the stock caliper. And I couldn't use the rotor fixing bolts since the holes on the ECS rotors didn't line up but after talking to a few folks, it didn't seem overly critical. The lug bolts do all the work anyway. Otherwise, it's pretty much plug and play. One thing to watch out for though is the pad wear sensor connector is super brittle, mine broke when I squeezed it to disconnect. Next time, I'd use needle nose pliers to pull it from inside instead of squeezing it, I was amazed how it just crumbled when I squeezed it.

So far still breaking it all in so no real feedback. It did address the rear brake rattle which I found to be a loose inner rear brake pad on the original calipers so I'm already happy. The new calipers are much heavier than stock though but I think it's worth it if for nothing else than filling up the wheel with brake rotor!

Yes, I just trimmed as shown & they bolted right on without any hassles.



No modifications; I just used the stock caliper carriers from the M5. Akebono claims no bed-in procedure is necessary but I performed the procedure you noted this morning. Old habits die hard.

[LibertyFLS]

So I just did this, but with 540 calipers since it's supposedly the same. I didn't have any issue with the extra piece of dust shield but when I tightened the caliper carriers down they stopped the rotor from turning. Sadly for me I thought the pistons were probably tight from bleeding the brakes and before I realized it, I drove around the parking lot with lots of grinding noises which left marks. I had to put 1 washer between the caliper carrier and the hub mount to get enough clearance to the rotor. Aside from that glitch, it went very smoothly on my 528iT (heavily modded, sorry I don't post much...) Probably gonna get the rotors turned since it's easy to get them off and that way they won't have weird wear marks.

[LibertyFLS]

Just a little update because I searched google and found this thread, so probably others might too. On PRE 03/2000 cars, you need to be sure to get the rotors for the "96-03/2000" E39 because they must have moved the hub out about 2mm after March 2000. With the 96-03/2000 rotors it fits perfect on my 99, although you might need to tweak the heat shield around the tie-rod because it's really close to the rotor, mine was dragging slightly.

Now it's all good, and I shouldn't have to take them back off again for as long as I own the car cause I've never owned a car long enough (mileage wise) to actually need to do a brake job haha