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Thread: Parking Brake Actuator Replaced

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Location
    Panorama City, California
    Posts
    12
    My Cars
    2003 BMW 745Li

    Parking Brake Actuator Replaced

    Hello all, wanted to see if someone could shed some light, I have replaced the broken plastic gear in my parking brake module, i replaced it with a metal one, i re-assembled everything nice and neat, the problem now is that the parking brake malfunction yellow light is still on, after doing lots of research i read in many threads that i could re-set it, believe me i tried many different ways to do it, and none of the methods i have followed has worked.

    I made the stupid mistake of pressing the parking brake button while the yellow parking brake light was still on and boy was I sorry i did that, the brakes were engaged and when I pressed the button again to release it the parking brakes would not disengage, the car would just not move, even worse was the fact that I lost the emergency release tool to disengage the parking brake .

    Anyhow after many many hours i decided to give the INPA cable and software a try, i had purchased this months before i decided to do the parking brake actuator job myself, thank God for this software, i was able to release the brake actuator through the software, although i did this by trial and error because i wasn't too familiar with this software. There is an option that says Electromechanical Parking module, within this option there are a few other options that I just can't remember at the moment but there is one option that says Braking (F7) a window pops up with 3 different options "0", "1" and "2", i tried all three of them and finally when I got two "2" and pressed OK i felt the car roll a little, I guess this is when the parking brake disengaged.

    Back to the reason of this thread is that I need to figure out how to fix this problem, even after replacing the metal gear i still can't use the parking brakes because as I mentioned if I press the button the brakes engage but i'm not able to disengaged them unless i connect the OBDII INPA cable and do it through the software. I opened the lid of the actuator today and took a video while I pressed on the parking button and I can see the motor and the balance arms actually moving and pulling the cables to engage the brakes, so that tells me that the motor and the electronics is working just fine, my gut tells me that there's some re-aligning, re-calibrating or even re-programming that may need to be done, maybe when I disassembled the whole thing somehow the module lost it's zero position or something like that.

    Anyhow, anyone has came across this issue and how did you guys go about fixing this, as I mentioned the motor and the electronics seem to work just fine but for some reason when I try to dis-engage the parking brake it just worn't work, by the way I was also able to re-set the error code and the yellow warning light did go away but it came back again since there's still obviously something wrong with the whole thing.

    I hope someone can give me some hints or advice on what to look for, i really don't want to have to take the whole actuator module apart, it took me hours to take it apart and put it back together the first time so i'm not looking forward to doing it again.

    Thanks everyone, hope someone has some advice for me.

    Walter

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Dallas, TX
    Posts
    10,384
    My Cars
    '93 850Ci- Daily Driver
    I just did this about a month ago. You need to go in to the INPA "Electromechanical Parking" and do the reset. I had to do it 3 times before it worked. You should be able to see the fault code in the Memory.
    You do not have to take the actuator apart if you installed everything correctly.
    '93 850Ci - Mineralweiß Metallic

    2001 740iL - Titansilber
    ALPINA B7 -Alpinweiß III


    ...the price of cool ain't cheap!

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2020
    Location
    UAE Dubai
    Posts
    5
    My Cars
    e65 2002 745i
    Quote Originally Posted by TxGR8White View Post
    I just did this about a month ago. You need to go in to the INPA "Electromechanical Parking" and do the reset. I had to do it 3 times before it worked. You should be able to see the fault code in the Memory.
    You do not have to take the actuator apart if you installed everything correctly.
    Hi,
    Can you please explain how to do this? I have the exact same issue. I have tried clearing errors and ECU reset multiple times but no luck. THX!

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