http://www.drivewerks.com/catalog/shopcart/DWKS/POR_DWKS_BLEEDR_main.htm

$42.95 plus ship[ping for the Euro bleeder. The ad mentions Mercedes specifically.

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Semibodacious Transmogrifications a Specialty

1990 300D 2.5 Turbo sedan 171K (Rudolf)
1985 300D Turbo TD Wagon 219K (Remuda)

"Time flies like and arrow, yet fruit flies like a banana"
---Marx (Groucho)

Well here are the embarrassing details of the weekend. This was my first car repair of any kind other than an oil change.

I changed the front rotors and pads on my 1991 300CE. The driver side rotor came off easily. New nicely machined Balo rotor, beefy Pagid pads and sensors. Old pads (Jurid?) had 2 stainless steel shims that I did not reinstall, just MB brake paste. There was just no room with the new rotor and pads. Cleaned and repacked the bearings, a messy and time consuming job. I was running short on time when I started the passenger side. The rotor was rusted on pretty good. Banging with a hammer and WD40 finally broke it loose. Ear plugs would have come in handy. Only had time to clean and regrease what was under the grease cap. Buttoned everything up and picked up my son from school. Brakes worked perfectly, no squeaks! Yea!

And now the embarrassing part. Went to flush brake fluid by MYSELF. Succeeded in getting a bunch of air in the lines. Enlisted my son to try and bleed with the 2 man method, and got nothing but air and a few dribbles of fluid from the rear calipers and the fluid in the reservoir never went down. Reservoir APPEARED full of fluid, so I kept pumping and bleeding with no success. I called my brother in law (former Caddy mechanic) and he suggested that I might have so much air in the system that I should try bleeding the fronts first. So I did that. Everything went textbook. Fluid went down in reservoir, old fluid came out of caliper, pedal dropped when I bled, etc. But I couldn’t get the rears bled. You can all probably guess what the problem was. My driveway is on a slight incline, nose of the car down. This plus jacking up the rear, prevented the fluid in the front and rear parts of the reservoir from equalizing. Only if I filled the reservoir to overflowing would the fluid then makes its way back to the rear compartment for the rear calipers. This, we discovered, only AFTER undoing the hydraulic lines at the ABS and master cylinder trying to locate how far fluid was getting and after pulling the master cylinder because we then thought the piston was somehow jammed too forward.

But all’s well that ends well. Brakes work super and thanks to all on the Forum.

I too had problems with clearance on the front brakes. There's just not enough room (or barely enough room) for the full thickness of the pads -- even on a worn rotor!

I found part of the problem was the shims can slide too far forward or backward, needlessly shimming the gap between the sides of the pad backplate and machined slot in the caliper. I had to nudge them off the slot. You also MUST clean these slots of brake dust before installing the pads. I even had to remove the antisqueal paste goop from the backside, hoping to gain some room.

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95 E320 Cabriolet, 159K

Kestas, any idea why this is. Is it the different manufactures of pads that have different thickness??? I saw Glenmore put his pads in that were very thick and for sure no room for the shims that were previously insatalled on the old pads.

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Rich

1990 300CE
71 Chevelle SS 454

My experience was with Pagid brakes. I measured the material thickness and it appeared to be okay within spec. I think spec calls for 11 mm new. I examined my brakes carefully to see if I could find any interference. That's when I found the shims weren't centered. Otherwise, the pistons were fully retracted and the pad backing was snug against the machined slots in the caliper. My brakes barely fit over the rotor -- and the lip on the outer edge of the rotors were filed off!

Like I said before, pay careful attention to get rid of any crud in the caliper machined slots, and make sure the shims are centered. I don't think you don't gain any space by removing the shims. They only move the piston back by a hair... the pads are still fixed in the same location by the slots. I assume the piston can move back a bit more.

Maybe this is why MB uses the special paste (I analyzed it at work and found it to be simply copper-based neversieze) instead of the goop Bendix supplies. The paste takes up essentially no thickness.

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95 E320 Cabriolet, 159K