sorry for being out of subject but it wont harm anyone

Drilled discs

A common misconception is that the purpose of drilled discs is to promote cooling. This couldn't be further from the truth, The real purpose is to reduce weight.
Drilling can allow brake dust and gases to escape, but with modern brake pads, this usually isn't a problem. Choosing a drilled disc for that purpose doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Many high performance cars like Porsche and Mercedes AMG come with drilled discs from the factory. For these cars, the drilling is mainly about the looks, just like bright red calipers. When people do serious high-performance driving on a trackdays, they usually swap to regular plain discs.

Drilled discs generally wear out brake pads faster and produce much more brake dust as a result.
Drilled discs have a shorter service-life than plain discs and tend to develop stress fissures/cracks over their lifetime

Grooved Discs

Grooved discs keep the pad surface clean and allow certain gasses to escape which improves performance. not too many grooves though, you only need 6 or so, anymore and it it just for looks (it looks great by the way )

For street driving they may make a marginal improvement in initial brake "bite"
Grooved Discs are great for shedding water and mud off the rotor surface as in Rally racing or wet-weather racing.

Grooved Discs do accelerate pad wear and produce more dust just like drilled discs do. They also add noise and vibration into the system. For many these issues are annoying enough to not choose grooved discs, unless you do alot of rallying!

Two-piece discs

Two piece discs have several advantages including lower weight while maintaining most of the heat capacity and better cooling by having a more open center section
Two piece discs increase costs and generally a poor choice for street cars. For racing, they are great! (helloo C43 owners)

As always you guys come back with fantastic information; thanks!

I am probably just gonna go with the C32 brakes it seems to be the easiest and requires the least custom work. I just thought the porsche brakes would be cool but when i came back down to reality i realized that money could be better spent somewhere else lol. In reguards to the lca issues with the bigger rotors will i have an issue with that on a 1990 300ce?

Thanks again guys, i really appreciate it!

mmmm i would say yes unless you have a sportline ce.

by the way the easiest, cheapest and most effective mods to the brake would be the silver arrow brake setup.
IIRC calipers front and rear would cost you 700$-800$, and you would still have to buy discs and pads ( lets say 500$) and the installation.
C32 calipers would be more expensive and very very hard to find! and they require more work to fit.

pictures of the control arms (early and late model)


PS: Balljoint clearance 1 is for the late lca (means bigger brakes would bolt)
Balljoint clearance 2 is for the early lca (means you need to change those if you want to upgrade for anyting larger than 300mm)


Many thanks to forum member GSXR for plenty of great info! thanks Dave

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it seems in hindsight, that i was 'lucky' because my car had the 'sportline' lower control arms, wich was why i didnt encounter the disk clearance issues that some have had.

these can be fitted to non sportline cars btw.

It seems from the link below, that if you use the 345mm slk front disks, the offset is slightly different, and a 2.5mm washer on the callipers sets it all up correctly, so you can use the replaceable ball joint lower arms!

i have attached the pdf on brakes, wich is slightly out of date in that it does not list the r171 slk55 setup, wich is the ultimate straight bolt on set up imho. much better than the 129 brembos, at a price!

as for the booster and master cylinder, i have had no issues at all, just use steel flexi hoses seems to sort it.

if you study the master cylinder part of the pdf, it seems as i read it that there is very little to gain from swapping them, but maybe a 500e or 129 booster will be worth it, but i can wait to find on at my leisure.

will report back when ive fitted my four pots (211 e55amg komp or s55amg komp callipers with s55amg komp disks) to the rear some time real soon. this is a straight bolt up solution with 330mm disks.

this guy http://mercedes-190.co.uk/topic/227930/1/ didnt upgrade his master cylinder or brake booster and has six pot on the front and four pots on the back...

Attached Files

124_brakes.pdf (42.2 KB, 639 views)

__________________
ce 320 amg
widebody
tiwn turbo
Mutty 'der nail'
soon to be a six speed nail


"some mods improve your car and make it into something it never was, other mods, however, although essentially the same, are not, and make that car a ricer"

if your car isnt shiny, you dont know what you are talking about, remember; paint shine = knowledge. In order to be taken seriously, you should spend all your money on paint, (and get a dyno reading).
Dont forget to polish it often

Just to whet your appetite...a very worthwhile modification!

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Dean Albrecht
"Lead, follow, or better yet, get out of the way!"E500 owners motto

My friend from the Netherlands is running porsche 993 calipers(996 would work as well), and using r129 sl500 discs(320mm) up front. All he did was make his own bracket, and use custom length s/s hose and it works perfectly. Currently working on fitting boxster calipers to the rear.

What year is his w124?

No issues with the rotors or calipers fitting?

So the 1998-02 SL500/600 only came with the silver arrow brakes?

Did you have to upgrade your brake booster at all?

Was it a clean install, any custom parts or modifications?




Thanks again everyone for the input!

brake booster ""may"" help, but it isnt a ""must"" at ""all""

Hope this helps!

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Dean Albrecht
"Lead, follow, or better yet, get out of the way!"E500 owners motto

Most definitely. Thanks!

Conski, just to be clear...the SA brake upgrade is a bolt-on only for the 500E500 W124, which essentially has the R129 suspension.

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Dean Albrecht
"Lead, follow, or better yet, get out of the way!"E500 owners motto

Oh okay. Wasn't paying attention to your photos with the brake kit on the 500e. I'm sure it will take some more modifications to get it on a '90 300ce. A nice future project, but great information to have so i can start hunting for the parts

It is a blot on for the 300E too if it have the later suspension.

I already attached pictures of the difference between suspensions in this thread so all you have to do is have a look at your car and at the pictures.

If you are interrested in the SA brake setup, there is a member on the forum who does have a kit for sale (front and rear calipers) if i recall for 750$.

PM me if you need more info