pdelaney8

Hi All,

I've been watching the forums and have valued all of your helpful posts for a while now and this is my first cry for help.

I just finished swapping in the winter tires on my 06 550 with 60k miles and when I went to back the car out the garage it wouldn't move. After checking things out I've determined that all 4 brakes are locked up tight. I checked the codes with my generic (non-bmw) code reader and it's clean and I have no idea where to go from here.

Has anyone seen this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Pat

JayArras

When you put the winter rims on, did they go on easy or tight? Could be that they don't have the proper offsets. Did you use the same rims last year?

pdelaney8

Hi Jay,

Yes, same rims and tires as last year. Also same spacers and longer bolts on the rears. Everything went right on with some aluminum anti seize.

Pat

seanjordan20

I have never heard of that happening before. Have you tried taking the cap off the brake fluid and pressing the brakes? Did you grease the guide pins. If not when were the last time they were greased? How many miles do you have on the car?

pdelaney8

Just tried taking the cap off and pressing the brakes; no change. I didn't have the brakes apart this time, just swapped the wheels/tires but the front pins were greased about a month ago when I replaced the front pads. I have't done the rears yet so I don't know when they were last greased. The car has about 60k on it.

seanjordan20

Have you tried putting the old wheels back on to see if there is any change. Sorry I did not read the first post all the way.

You are looking at a bad master cylinder at this point. Try to bleed the brakes to see if the caliper releases. This way you know the calipers are good. Drive and see what you get. If it locks back up then unplug the ABS module unplug the battery for 5 mins then plug it back up. At this point you would eliminate everything but the master cylinder and brake booster.

Is your brake pedal hard to press at the moment? Is this something that happened immediate after the swap or you drive first then it locked up. Usually you get brake locked after the system has over heated.

pdelaney8

I tried the battery and ABS Module unplug and that did not help although interestingly I got a brake fluid low warning after hooking everything back up and starting the car. I checked the fluid and it's full. I'll try bleeding the brakes next.

The brake pedal feels normal and this happened somewhere between swapping the left front wheel (1st of the 4) which I remember turning freely because I forgot to loosen the lugs before jacking, and putting the car in reverse to back out after the 4th wheel change. I do not recall if the right front (3rd of 4) was spinning freely because I remembered to loosen the lugs on that one but now that I think about it, it wasn't spinning when I torqued it up so maybe it was already locked. I did not start car in between the 1st and the 4th wheel change and I wasn't working on anything else on the car during this time.

So to make a short story long the car hasn't moved since the tire/wheel swap.

pdelaney8

Well, this turned out to be user error after all. Although I have been using the same (directional) winter tires and wheels for 3 seasons, I must have always had the same wheels on the same hubs before. This time when I went to mount the tires with the least tread on the front, I must have switched it up and although the winter tires are all the same size two of the wheels have a different offset. This caused the fronts rims to lock up tight against the strut tubes. I bought the wheels second hand and had no idea this was the case.

Thanks for your reply's and sorry to have been an idiot.

JayArras

Lesson learned, as they say. I applaud you for admitting your mistake here , and we're glad you did. It may save someone else the same pain some day.

Glad it all worked out for you!

seanjordan20

I am glad you figured it out because it was making no sense to me.