Thanks so much Steve (I assume this is your first name?
).
Yes - my only explanation is the hand-brake having seized on the rear wheels. BTW - why do you call it E-brake? I was under impressions we don't have E-brake in our M235i - just a normal, mechanical one (I do have E-brake in my Golf 7 R; not only is it engaged by flipping an electrical switch rather than a pulling the traditional lever up, but it uses the main braking circuit on all 4 wheels as opposed to the classical handbrake operating on the rear only...
Anyway, do you guys see any explanation for the fact which is causing a doubt and serious concern in my mind whether it actually was "just the seized hand-brake": when I tried to rock the car, it
seemed to be willing to move forward, but not a millimeter backwards. Cannot state this with absolute certainty, though, as my front tires are stopped by the wooden board I had fixed to my garage's floor so that I'd never touch the front wall with the bumper (my garage is extremely short)... Were it not for the fact that the car wasn't stopped dead in Drive the way it was in Reverse, I'd be 100% sure it was nothing more but the seized handbrake - in my 45 years of motoring, I had many situations like this when during a freezing night, my wet brakes got "welded" so much that I had to use a warm water splash to free them... But at those occasions, the car wouldn't move at all neither forward not backward, so the reason was clear and obvious.
So - considering how the emergency/parking brake operates on rear wheels in the 2 series - can someone explain why, when it's seized like this, it blocks the wheels' reverse movement more than it does their forward rotation? If you help me understand this, I will rest assured there is nothing to worry about (I hope nothing was/is wrong with the AT/torque converter as no error light went up, and there are no warnings in iDrive vehicle status)... Cheers,
Piotr
PS. One other thing (not so much worrying but making me wonder): as I said, my car did have several long periods of not being used at all during this winter (I only use it for long trips, and it so happened I had less than usual need for them lately). The car was sitting in the garage for several days and not always clean
between those rare trips, and yet no rust developed on the brake rotors (true - the temperature was well below freezing most of the time). But after the wash, even though the car wasn't used for a much shorter time - I'm having the rotors severely rusted now...
PPS Here is the link to the parking brake parts (inside rear wheels):
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=34_1972 . As can be seen, this indeed is a very traditional mechanical brake with shoes, acting inside an additional drum;
does it explain a possibility of complete seizure of only reversing rotation of the wheels?