[FRESHE90]

all you have to do is change the brake sensor.. thats all mine was. when they brakes are changed you have to change the sensor too. i had this same problem and thats all i had to do.

[bavarian19]

I am at 49,700 miles, and this warning came up today. I have service appt this coming week, so we will see.

Im just taking precautions.

[Spitfirocks]

It just happened to me. All four of my brakes are considered "new." I tried resetting it and it didnt do the trick. What should i do? I am out of warranty, but have extended

[bmw6953]

FRESHE90 all you have to do is change the brake sensor.. thats all mine was. when they brakes are changed you have to change the sensor too. i had this same problem and thats all i had to do.

I second this. In October 2008 my red carlift and red brake light symbols came on. I took in my car to my independent BMW service center, and all it needed was a new brake sensor. It was a big relief when I found that out. Now as of yesterday these two light came on again. I just replaced my rear brakes and sensor so I know its not any of the rear brake components. I Looked at my front brakes and sure enough my brakes/sensor are really worn out even though my dash board said it has 2000 miles left to go. I am going to replace front rotors,brakes,sensor, and reset all the service lights. That should do the trick. I hope this helps.

[DorianGre]

My car is 9k miles out of warranty.

I have the brake warning light/car on lift thing. I put on all new pads and sensors yesterday. I would say that I did have a bad very sensor that caused the light to come on, the rear sensor had come loose and had been ripped from the cable. All I had was a couple bare wires hanging down. I put on fresh out of the box sensors, however I still have the brake warning light/car on lift on issue. I was able to hit the right combo of buttons to get the fault code CC-ID 71 to display. I reset both the front and rear brakes in the system, now they are both yellow with _ _ _ _ _ _ for mileage.

Does anyone know a definitive way on how to get the faults cleared so the car on lift will go away?

[lightning20]

i have the same problem how much did the sensors cost and for you that changed the brakes how much was it altogether?

[bmw6953]

hi, in order to resolve this problem you will need 1. new brakes and sensors, or 2. new sensor front/rear or both. After that reset the the cbs and everything should be back to normal.

[cfreak]

I have the same problem. The vechicle lift with brake light came on. The CBS was reporting 40K (rear) and 12K (front) are now "_ _ _ _ _ _ _".

My car is still under CPO. Do you have any idea if my CPO warranty will cover this if the problem is not caused by brake pad?

[bmw6953]

It should be covered under warranty. Take it in. As I have stated in other threads the cars CBS is not all that accurate in determining how much of your brakes pads are left. In most cases both your front and your rear brakes pads are worn out and the sensors stop taking acurrate readings.

[Wrightski]

I've had the same problem as a result of trying to be clever !
I checked the front pads. They had at least 5mm on the outside pad and the computer indicated 2800 miles left. I decided to reset the indicator with a view to changing the pads in a couple of months.

This brought up the red car on lift and red brake warning light.

There's only one way to resolve this.

Replace the pads and replace the wear sensor.
A new sensor must be fitted.
This will clear the brake warning light when the car is started. Stop the engine.
Follow the reset procedure for the front brakes. The computer will then show 27000 miles left.
Start the engine. Then stop the engine. The red car lift will disappear.

[Growler]

Had to take mine to the stealers... not too bad, they used a new front brake sensor to rest the system, then put my old one back in. Cost me £50 labour.
Unless the sensor is brand new, it will have worn, when you reset the brake service indicator, the computer gets a signal from the sensor indicating the is some wear, (Perhaps 30%....) the computer cannot work out the difference between the sensor indication and the reset, hence it puts up the red car on the lift accompanied by the brake indicator. You will need to replace the sensor, then reset to get the light out.

[jettech]

had the same problem, red brake light with car on the lift in red, no miles showing on the brake warning either. just bought 2 front and rear brake sensors OEM , installed and reset the brake warning lights front and rear, with no issues.
new sensors will cure this problem code 71

[cn555ic]

Had an issue with the red car on a lift...Went to the service menu and reset the red car on the lift and still had the brake light and this red car on a lift upon startup. I shut the car down and went back into the service menu and this time I reset the rear and front of car (circle symbol with swiggly lines)...Started the car and it was gone! This freaking car has so many little bugs...I installed something and had to hook up a wire to the positive terminal of the car and again I didn't tighten the connection..I heard when there is something up with the charging system or the battery is going dead, it triggers DSC malfunctions as well as any braking mechanism...

[Camski]

All, I have the same problem. Brake sensor broke, I replaced it and reset the light via the manual method. Now the service for brakes show miles remaining at _ _ _ _ _. I have the red brake lighting and red car on a lift... Bought the Bavarian Technic tool and no percentages are showing next to the amount remaining. Tried to manually adjust the value still no luck. replaced with another sensor, no luck. IDEAS?


I simply can't get the light to reset using any method...

Sounds like I need the software update and I'm 600 miles out of warranty. what's the typical charge for loading the new software

[envoid]

This is an old thread but comes up first when trying to figure out this issue (aka google).

I went through everything and thought something was horribly screwed as well. But was able to figure the path to fix and what looks like the cause.

If you attempt to reset the brakes while the sensor has started being chewed into, the system seems to know and will throw this light with red brake light, even if it doesn’t trigger the service warning yet. It also seems to not like if you reset the front first when the rears were replaced but not any of the sensors (like you did the front without wear into the sensor while the rear was being ground on like my situation (long story for another time)) and probably vice versa.

You have to replace the worn sensor and reset that brake service first.

You also have to wait for the red lift light to go away before you can get into the service monitor to reset it. I had the coming maintenance show and then the red lift icon and I was trying to get in while the lift was showing. You have to wait for that lift icon to go away THEN hold the button to get into the service monitor.

Hope this helps anyone.

[labrador]

Had to do something recently. Rear warning came on, still had 5.5mm friction remaining as these are the 2nd of pads on the rotor. Did not want to see the warning and hear dings for another several thousand miles.

Cut and twist together the wires near the caliper. Solved it for me until I am down to 3mm. Of course need to keep an eye, but given the 2-stage sensor (0ohm, 170ohm), I cannot just slap a new one on there. Going to end up the same.

[mecheng77]

This just happened to my car and both the front and rear show no mileage remaining in the cbs menu and red car on hoist icon. I doubt both front and rear brakes are worn, the front have a good amount of material but the rears look low from what I can tell with just a flash light. Why would both trigger