I just realized I was speaking of my W123. You will need to check and see if yours are front and rear as some later model cars use a diagopnal like like right front to left rear.

I went to O'Reilly Auto Parts to pick up the ATE front calipers. They had Bendix pistons and heat shields in them. The pins in one of the hardware sets were much too long and one of the spring plates looked goofy, even though they both had the same part number printed on the bags.

I brought them home, put the air compressor nozzle up to the inlet, and popped out the pistons and heat shields in the front left. I did the same with the front left Bendix caliper and swapped them out. They are interchangeable but different lengths--the Bendix pistons are shorter.

I also was able to come up with two good hardware sets out of the four bags. Now both the Bendix front calipers fit onto the rotors with the pads installed, with almost no drag.

Tomorrow the ATE calipers go back to O'Reilly. Hopefully they get sorted out back at the rebuilder, but someone else will probably end up with them. At least one having Bendix pistons and heat shields shouldn't affect functionality, though both hardware kits will have pins that are too long (ATE and Bendix for this model seem to use the same length pins, so I don't know why they throw in pins that are too long half the time--if you get hardware at all).

Problem solved (for me/my roommate, anyway). Proof that rebuilding of calipers should be left to people familiar with these brake systems because of the high likelihood of getting parts mixed up, that can cause big problems even if the difference is very small.

I'm apprehensive of returning the cores because it would probably be best to keep them for the future when good cores are increasingly hard to find, while good rebuilds become more scarce.

It sure is a good thing that I test fit all the parts before I started painting the calipers and had the car taken apart with plans to get it back together by Monday.

Looking back on this, if it was my car, I would have rebuilt the calipers myself. Now they are going to be painted red with caliper paint so they stand out from behind the CLK wheels.

The Bendix front calipers we will be using are on bottom. The ATE calipers up top are those from which I swapped out a piston and hardware set.
http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...294%5B1%5D.jpg

I just want to chime in and say that my local Napa got me some very nice ATE remaned calipers (front and rear). They installed perfectly with no issues (I might have cleaned up a little of the excess paint around one of the mounting holes). I though the quality was as good as you could expect with re-manunfacture Mercedes stamped calipers. The boxes were imprinted with the "Eclipse" brand. They were in the ballpark of 60 or so each.

My most frustrating caliper experiences have been 3 different times when they ordered me a set and I got two lefts or two rights! Even had one parts idiot claim they're supposed to be identical!
Made him pull up the computer photo and said "Just order that one". He mumbled something like "It won't work", but it did.

Happy Motoring, Mark

When I inspected the front calipers at Auto Zone, the employee said, "It's the same as the other one." And then when I inspected the rears, he also said, "It's the same as the other one." And then when I returned them and he went to scan them, he kept scanning the same two boxes over and over and told his supervisor "I'm scanning each box twice but only two calipers are showing up in the computer."

Iam not sure about right now but several years ago if you were an AAA Club member you got a discount at NAPA. But NAPA parts usually cost more then say Autozone.

Slightly off subject but out here NAPA parts people are extremely knowledgeable about parts for all common vehicles and even industrial vehicles and Big Rigs at least locally they long term employees.

They also seem to know places where you can get reliable good quality services that they do not provied.
The parts people at the Local Autozone seem to only know what is on the Computer and not much more.

NAPA parts were used by the School District that I briefly worked for and a lot of shops use NAPA Parts. I suspect that when a shop installs a part they don't want it coming back soon under warranty and that the want it to fit correctly. I short they don't want to waste time and money.

If you have to warrant something the labor you spend redoing the job was time you could have been making money on with another Customer. Also your Customer might not come back. So if you have a shop good quality parts save you lots of trouble.

Shops can buy warranty insurance but if you use it too frequently the cost goes up or you are canceled.

My nearest NAPA used to have some older staff that knew what they were doing. That changed to a bunch of 20-something airheads and I stopped going there. Then they got some different, more competent guys, and I started using NAPA again. That lasted about a year, until they closed the store!

Happy Motoring, Mark

Post #17. Thought Bendix used the spring rattle clips. Did you switch something? Or are the bottom ones actually ATE?

Nope, apparently second generation W126 Bendix calipers use the same pins and retainer springs as the ATE calipers.

Understand. I am a first generation guy.

Thx.

Clearly it takes time to learn things as the old guard types are eventually going to fade away. And, you simply cannot pass on 20-30 years of experience to some one even in 6 months.
Also the Auto Mcparts stores have high turnover in personnel. Who hopefully move on to higher paying jobs.

As a new Mechanic I got a lot of instruction from the old timers and what I found is that when the told you how to do something there was often steps left out.
At first I believe they were doing it on purpose (perhaps resenting someone new) but later as I was more experienced I realized that you do things in your routine to fix various things the job prompts you do what is next and you easily recall what to do.

Without the prompt relating a step by step from route memory is not as easy.
Good Teachers are rare.