The brakes on our 1993 850 have started squeaking, and I'm pretty sure it's the wear indicators. This is my girlfriend's car, so I don't drive it or listen to it on a regular basis. Last time I checked the brakes had plenty of life left in them but when I thought about it earlier it occurred to me that that could've been 15k miles ago or so. I haven't had a chance to take the wheels off and measure the pads yet but looking at the rotors, I think I can see some scoring. Unfortunately, there's scoring on one front and one rear rotor, necessitating a four-wheel pad and rotor replacement.

Checking on FCP the parts seem to be pretty reasonably priced. I got a quote from my trusted euro-car mechanic at about $750 for all four wheels, and from the dealer at about $1000. This seems pretty high, which makes me wonder if there's something I don't understand about the brakes on this car.

From reading other forum posts here it seems like it's no more complicated than brakes on any other car. Looks like the pads and calipers come off pretty easily, and the rotors as well. But given the high quotes I wanted to post here to make sure I'm not missing something. Are the rotors difficult to get off? Are the wheel bearings integrated with the rotor on the front or the rear necessitating pressing a new bearing race into the new rotor? Do the rear rotors require replacing pads or hardware for the e-brake if the e-brake is still working fine? Anything weird to look out for?

I've never done a brake job before, but I've helped and I've done plenty of other car work (radiators, fuel injectors, along with the normal oil changes and tune up tasks). Is this something I could likely accomplish on my own in a day on a weekend? I'm not planning to open the hydraulics because the fluid is still good, for now.

 

It is a cake walk!!
But inspect everything first These pads don't have wear indicators so the squeeling might only be because of aftermarket pads if it has them.

I would say you can get the brakes done is a couple of hours atleast.

 

I concur. It is very easy to do. A couple of tips though... First, do only one wheel at a time (that way if you make a mistake or get lost, you have an untouched wheel to use as a reference) Second, TAKE YOUR TIME. Third, use the references and resources of this site for guidance. Good luck!

Glenn

 

Interesting that the pads don't have wear indicators. I won't have the opportunity to take the wheels off and inspect closely until this weekend, but in casual inspections through the wheel spokes I notice that the pads still look pretty thick. One front and one rear rotor is scored or scraped in certain spots, which makes me wonder if maybe, somehow, something got stuck in the pads. Don't know how likely that is.

At any rate, I think I'm at least going to have to take the pads off to clean them. From other posts I've read the hardware is likely to fall apart if I do that, considering it's probably a couple or three years old. Given the rotors conditions I may have to replace them anyway. At least if the pads aren't worn down I may be able to put it off a while.

Thanks for the tips so far! Hopefully I'll find out this weekend what's going on and I may end up posting back.

 

Nothing at all should fall apart when you take it apart.

 

I did my front and back brakes, rotors and pads, before I did my first ever oil change (on any car).

 

Most disc brake jobs are fairly straight forward, even on newer cars.

There is only so much technology that can go into disc brakes.

 

the only issue i had doing the rear brakes on mine, was that w/ new pads and rotors there didn't seem to be quite enough room for everything to squeeze together inside the calipers. so, i had to drive a mile or two to wear the pads down. a lot of the excess anti-squeak stuff was burning off, so when i stopped, i had a nice cloud of smoke coming out from behind my car. it all worked out in the end.

 

Glad it all went well for you.
A little bit of smoke after the pads seating on the new rotors is pretty common.