Rear brake pad replacement, help

F

Fyreball

Member
 California
So I’m a long time diy car person including the the Z3 I had, but I was in for a rude awakening that the e89 rear calipers have an e brake motor and the pistons can’t be compressed without a program to release the motor or going to dealer. I’ve seen several write ups about removing the motor and then compress the piston and reinstall motor. Some say to have the car off and locked and some say to unhook the battery, so is it that easy? Need some advice please. Some say to hook the motor wires to a battery and run motor in reverse—-I’m not going to do that!!! Also Not going to dealer.
As a side question, on the right rear I unhooked the sensor wire but now can’t seem to find the spot where it plugs back in?
 
Morning. I had the same surprise a few months ago. Bought a dedicated OBD reader/coder which has the facility to put the parking brake into service mode. It also read the codes on my pals Z4 and diagnosed a faulty brake sensor wire at the front.

Paid for itself first time, mines an Autophix, but others use Foxwell; then there app based ones like Carley and Christa but they require annual subscriptions. (I have a Carly dongle but not the subscription!)
 
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The pistons can be screwed back. Done this myself not long ago.
 
The brake pad wear sensor slides into the brake pad at the top ..there’s a groove in the backing plate for its insertion
 
I managed to replace my rear pads and discs without any special tools, or a scanner, or any 'service mode'. As said, the motors can be wound back manually (just got to be careful with them).
It is very do-able at home. I did it and had never changed a brake pad in my life before.
I found a useful youtube video for the parking brake motor part.
 
Thank you for replies and advise. Anubis Zed YouTube Video really helped. It was an easy job after watching it. A #30 and 45 torx is all you need. With 67k original miles it had the original rear factory pads and rotors, a little tough getting all the bolts out and I had to hammer the rotor to get it unstuck——all new now and with slotted rotors.

Forgot to mention after finishing there were no codes thrown
 
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Probably the easiest and best hand brake set up on any car i owned, once you know how to take apart.
Every other car i owned needed cables adjusting before nearly every mot.
Crawling under car with limited access for spanners.
And who designed Mazda RX7 hand brake calipers, worse ever design.
 
Also good idea to pack the motor drive end with grease. On my car both had water ingress and rusted the motors.
One failed, came up as fault and in obd reader read as voltage problem.
It stopped me operating the ebrake.
Bit tricky at times driving.
 
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