W210 braking marginal
 

When I was working out of town the front brake warning lamp came on when my wife was driving her car so instead of my advise to drive with a bit of caution until my return in a few days she had them replaced at some Indy for some $900. That was over a year ago they replaced the rotors and pads. I was never happy with the job and took it back several times to complain and they inspected them ran codes and both times told me everything was fine.

Since I had just now replaced the rear pads I thought it was a good time to pull the front calipers off and have a closer look. Both inner front pads were down to 20% remaining while the outer pads were looking brand new. I had a struggle to pull the slide pins they were full of crap mixed in the grease. After cleaning and regreasing, new pads and reassembly now with hard braking the car stops as it should with the abs also working on dry pavement.

Just a caution to check everything carefully and again events like this reaffirm that DIY provides the confidence in knowing what you really have.

Amazing that a shop could screw up such a simple job... I'd pull the calipers and inspect the mounting bolts. I bet they didn't replace the bolts, or reapply loctite blue...

I left out the part about the missing set screw for the disk one one side and also found 1/8 wheel wobble due to a loose bearing.