So far I've found nothing and I am kinda desperately looking for a solution.

When driving over roads that aren't perfectly flat there is a squeak, sometimes constant, sometimes only on bumps, that comes from right in between the front seats. At first I thought it was my rear calipers, but I now have had 3 people agree with me that it is coming from the handbrake assembly itself.

When driving and the squeak starts, if you slightly lift the handbrake (not even to the first click) the squeak goes away. Then as soon as you push it back down the the fully off position. It will start again.

My neighbor told me to leave it in the first position, as the light doesn't come on in the first position in my car. But when left in the first position, there was a considerable amount of brake dust and heat in the rear, so I stopped doing that quickly and have just been dealing with it.

So far I have tried to remove the boot and tighten and loosen the handbrake cable to no success, and spray down the assembly with silicone and white lithium, also with no success. It will only happen if the handbrake is resting fully down with no tension at all.

*the handbrake is fully functioning and is not a life threatening issue, just a minor noise that annoys me*

My next and final idea is when I take my r53 in to get my passenger airbag recall repaired, to tell them about it and see what they can find.

Any ideas?

 

Anything?

 

No one has any ideas? Is going to my local Mini dealer my best option??

 

You've done as much as I probably would. I'm wondering if it's the lever unit itself that's squeaking. Maybe the joint sections? I know you said you sprayed it down, but maybe try cleaning off the unit itself and only spraying the joint areas. Can you expose the area enough so that you can work in it and wiggle certain sections to see if you can recreate the squeak? I'd pay close attention to each area and maybe use a cloth to place/wrap on an area and then drive around to see if that eliminates the noise. Hope that makes sense. If worse comes to worse and you've determined that it's 100% coming from the unit, you could replace it if you really wanted to: http://www.pelicanparts.com/cgi-bin/...-6-774-814-BOE. Hope you get this figured out.

 

Sometimes a spray lubricant won't do it, try a silicone grease on the joints.