One of the rear brakes on my R56 has started squealing, so I want to take the caliper off to lube the pins and apply anti-squeak compound to the pads. No pad wear warning light, and a quick visual inspection seems to indicate that the pads have plenty of life left. Should be pretty straight forward but...

Now here's the question: the service manual says the the caliper bolts have self-locking features and should not be reused. Is this true? I've never heard of self-locking bolts on brakes before, nor have I heard a mechanic hint or warn that some cars do. Any advice?

 

Just a few threads of what looked like blue Loctite on mine. I reapplied some and reused them. Nothing seemed unusual, pretty typical of other brakes I've serviced.

 

I don't think I've heard of anyone buying new bolts for a brake job on the MINI. Blue Loctite for me too.

 

Ok, thanks for the info.

 

There are a bunch of bolts on the mini that are supposedly not reusable. I've reused almost all of them. Nothing has fallen off yet.

There are a few bolts on the mini that are TTY that I've replaced but those are specifically called out with torque specs like 43lbs/ft + 90 degrees or something like that. The driver side motor mount I believe uses TTY bolts.

 

Loctite 242 is your friend.....

 

If you look at the (new) caliper bolts in this photo, you'll see the band of threadlock that comes on them. BMW include replacement bolts with their brake discs so that mechanics don't need to use (liquid) threadlock. It's the threadlock band that is single-use, not the bolt itself, as far as I am concerned.

 

Makes sense, thanks for that.