The poxy electric O/S park brake on my Passat seized on this week. The good old RAC man got me out of trouble and removed it but its mullered and needs a new one. For a genuine VW part the want the best part of £300. My local parts place can get them for £240 but it comes with a caliper, which is obviously a waste as i dont need the caliper. Just wondered if anyone else has had the same issue and if they have found anywhere that does just the electric motor thingyjig on it own?

Cheers

Bloke i know had aPassat do the same. He ended up getting an exchange calliper with the motor.

Sound like a stupid idea. Lever and cable FTW.

Defo a crap idea…

I had to go to VW, £250 and I fitted it myself. It is outrageous.

It’s not a complex mechanism though and you may have some joy trying to free it up – I didn’t though. Try removing the gear assembly and soaking it in vinegar…

It’s actually not a bad idea as such, it’s just that for some reason they failed to seal the unit properly. There’s no rubber seal or anything where it meets the caliper. Reasonable idea, poor implementation, and outrageous cost to replace for a few gears and a motor. Especially when they go wrong so often – why hasn’t someone started knocking them out for a reasonable price? And why do VW not price the spares reasonably? They are often pretty good with goodwill gestures, so why they hell can’t they supply these for £50 and if they make a loss, write it off as acknowledgement that they designed it poorly?

2008 onwards have upgraded design.

Plenty of info on reconditioned motors on passat forums but if you fancy more in depth and how to … https://sites.google.com/site/1810martin/passat-b6-electric-park-brake

If and when i can pick up the part without paying the earth, does it require the “brake fault” message clearing / re-setting by laptop etc or is it just bolt it on and away you go?

Are you sure its not the dash switch ? mine went, £20 off ebay and fitted in minutes, sorted 8)

No, RAC man had to come out to release it and took it off so i could get to work. Near side stii fitted and works fine.

You need a diagnostic machine to retract the piston so the pads can be changed???

I thought VW were supposed to be good. Not shite.

This is why I’ve bought a Mazda 6 estate; had Passats since 1989 and they’ve been pretty good, but what use is a car that my son can’t learn to drive in (handbrake only in test!)and 1 in 4 need their parking brakes replaced within the first few years (not to mention injectors and oil pumps failing).

Pads shouldn’t need retracting as far as im aware.

link above says it needs to be connected to diag machine so motor can wind out – unlike every other normal rear caliper where you push and turn with a cold chisel/wire cutters/retractor tool.

If they weren’t already retracted surely the brake would be locked on…

Pads wear. And i am just going off the link above.

I feel for you. I drove round for 3 weeks with cotton wool in my ears and the radio turned up to drown out the audible warning after mine went. So glad to get rid of that car!

(not to mention injectors and oil pumps failing).

The oil pump thing was a bad design used in one factory on one engine for a short time. It was subject to recall pretty early on. The injector issue applied to a larger group of a certain engine but still by no means all cars, and that too was subject to recall – after a long campaign apparently. I had mine done.

The normal procedure for changing pads is to use the computer, yes, but there is a way around it afaik.

1 in 4 need their parking brakes replaced within the first few years

Only the earlier ones.

I dont need the pads changed though its just the motor bit, it just bolts on then you connect the plug but does it need the fault message cleared on a diagnostic machine. i.e can it be done myself or does it need a garage to do it?

My mates had the oil pump and injector issues sorted on his after the oil pump went and wrecked the engine and VW wrote to him and offered him new injectors FOC.

His engines now rebuilt with an upgraded oil pump.

AFAIK, from what I’ve been told via my mate, the handbrake is basically a motor that needs to be wound back by computer even if you change pads.

Whether a new part comes wound in or out, I don’t know, too complex these new cars for me give me points and plugs and a normal handbrake 8)

I think the fault code clears itself.

My Passat has just suffered an electronic parking-brake seize-on, one side only. This followed a jump-start after being parked a couple of weeks, so I’m not sure if this is a mechanical seize from being parked or a computer glitch from the jumping.

My question, then, guys, is can the brake be released mechanically so that I can drive it to a dealer / scrapyard for a quote / repair? I’m rather remote from any dealerships so getting it transported immobilized to a dealer would cost a fortune, and once there, I’d have no choice but to accept their quote. Not good!!

The dash is also showing some warning lights, traction control and something else, a pentagon thing, which I’m guessing could be due to being torqued up one sided, but might also indicate a fried computer 🙁

Same happened to me after returning from holiday. I was not chuffed. The AA man wasn’t prepared to remove the handbrake (rightly) and leave me without, so called for a low loader to transport the car to the local dealers and us home.
Cost approx £800 for both sides to be fixed, and they tried to charge me for a new electronics module (another £400) that I didn’t authorise.
Apparently the gear drive housing splits and lets water and dirt in, which knackers everything.
VW deny that there was a problem and will not replace like they did with the injectors. They changed the design for later models.

If I wasn’t being paid mileage from home I would have had problems affording the repair.

Other than that the car has been faultless, only requiring the usual servicing (That’s me hexed).

blueeyedgirl. May be worth seeing if there are any reasonably local VW specialists. Not going to be cheap mind. Good luck.

If you are handy with a spanner (or torx bit in fact) you can remove the wheel, go behind the caliper and remove two torx bolts holding the black plastic module on the back of the caliper. It should then come off and you can unplug it and drive the car.

On the one that siezed on mine, the casing was not split, but water seems to have got in because there is no seal between the case and the caliper body.

Re transporting – if you have breakdown cover free with insurance, it might pay for transportation to a garage from home.

What aged Passats are we talking about here? – is my ’14 reg one (which I’ve only had for a week) doomed?

I bloody hope not as I’m stuck with it for 4 years (company car lease)

No, we are talking 2005-2008 for all these problems.

Suggest you get a good look at the other side. Second one on my car (56 plate) failed two weeks after the first. Both had a split housing. First time I was a long way from home so low loader as RAC guy wouldn’t undo it to let me drive off. Second time was on driveway so not such an issue but still costly and annoying.

i’ve had a lot of shit cars.

including, and i’m not kidding, a citroen visa which had been used to keep chickens in BEFORE i owned it.

(got 2 years out of that, didn’t even change the oil)

my passat with the leccy handbrake was the least reliable, most annoying heap i’ve ever had.

i drive like a nun, and i killed the engine in less than 20,0000 miles.

VW? utter carp.

Driver side rear caliper motor seized in my drive a couple of years back, IIRC I looked on line and then disconnected the battery for 5 mins, reconnected and the motor re-set itself.
Drove out to the VW garage without using the parking brake and then when parked up purposefully put it on so they would have to make an effort to get it in the workshop and actually earn the money they robbed off me!
Apart from that its been a decent car.

and i killed the engine in less than 20,0000 miles.

No you didn’t. The engines are not soft overall. There was a specific design flaw in the oil pump fitted to engines from one factory for a short period of time. Don’t condemn the whole of every Passat for that.

Don’t condemn the whole of every Passat for that.

Jog on love. Us French drivers have to put up with it from the Vag contingent on a daily basis. 😉 Epb is all very clever, but why? When was a handbrake a problem? Or even not good enough.

French cars have a long history of lower reliability in many areas. VW in the other hand have a long history of high reliability. This took a big hit when a few specific items caused trouble. Only problem is that th trouble they caused was pretty major!

I’ve had trouble with mine, so why would I stick up for it? Cos I’ve worked on it and I can see the amount of thought that’s gone into the whole car.

When was a handbrake a problem? Or even not good enough.

IIRC, electric handbrakes are lighter than the full on cable, lever etc. – if you want better fuel economy from a bigger/faster/safer car then you have to make things lighter. Much like the reason you only get a space saver tyre (or just a can of sealant).

Blame that market research when people tick random boxes on what they’d like their next car to have.

There are a few reasons for EPB;

1) releases space between the seats for other stuff
2) it’s easier to build a car with EPB as there are no cables/brakes to adjust during manufacture
3) it saves some weight (as breatheeasy said)
4) you can add some clever functionality – drive-away-release, hill-assist etc…

I blame the EU for the mess.

We used to have a rule that called the handbrake the emergency brake and it stated that it must be purely mechanical and independent of the main brakes. Then it was dropped in the name of ‘rule harmony’.

Same thing as the fire extinguishers going from separate colours to all red with small coloured bands.

Hill starts etc are done via the ABS on the Passat, at least on mine. And auto-driveaway isn’t that great because it takes too long to disengage so you strain against it for a bit.

However on the plus side, it’s more secure than a handbrake, cable wont’ stretch, never slips on a hill, and it does intelligent stuff like if you are stopped but still in drive it puts it on; also if you turn the car off in drive or neutral. This would ahve saved the life of one old lady I know of who forgot to take her car out of drive when she got out and was dragged along and mangled up.

Also, as above – lots of handy space in the centre console.

To be fair, it’s not a mess – it’s VW’s shit 2st gen implementation. There’s nothing complex about the concept but the internals of the motor unit are bizarre and over-engineered.

I disagree with you Mols; I think VW have been making really solid but pretty unreliable cars for 25 years now.
Remember the vacuum operated central locking from the early 90’s?
The ridiculous front suspension on the Mk5 Passat (sorted the understeer issues of previous models but wore out constantly).
The “solution in search of a problem” of the EPB with recent Passats is what finally drove me over the edge after having had VWs for decades.

World of pain, especially when it siezes when you’re on holiday in the Alps.

26 July – Tommy towtruck by Stu_N, on Flickr

Are we seriously citing “weight loss” as a benefit of a posh handbrake in a vehicle weighing a tonne and a half? That’s the same lunatic mentality that spends a three figure sum on a titanium water bottle that saves several grams on something that holds three quarters of a kilo of water.

World of pain, especially when it siezes when you’re on holiday in the Alps.

Mine once locked on when I was at the front of a queue driving off a ferry. That was a barrel o’ yuks.

Sorry Cougar but weight loss is a major issue and every Kilogram is highly valued by VM’s in the battle to reduce CO2 emmissions.

Agree with Cougar; Weight loss would be achieved by removing all that mass that gives you that distinctive chunky sound when you close the door, not by sticking in a device with no real benefits and which is prone to expensive malfunction.

weight loss is a major issue and every Kilogram is highly valued by VM’s in the battle to reduce CO2 emmissions.

I didn’t know that. But it’s not that valuable or we’d all be driving Atoms. (-: