240D for me!

[BrassMonkey]

I'm taking the car to work on Monday (unless its really nice out then I take the Harley) - Its 25 miles of highway each way. I'll blow it out good then.

[Yak]

Originally Posted by BrassMonkey

You guys will NOT believe this.

I decided to pull the calipers tonight to see if they are bendix or whatever. I started with the drivers side. This was the one I couldn't bleed.

I pull off the caliper and I notice the brake pads are BRAND NEW! They still have the brake in material on them. Yes they have been sitting for some time but what the heck. I bet there isnt 200 miles on these pads.

So I clean everything up & blow it out with compressed air then re-install it & remove the bleeder all together & let it drip brake fluid. After about 5 minutes of dripping I reinstall the bleeder screw.

I give the wheel a spin and have no hang ups. The wheel spins free.

So I jump to the other side. First thing I try to do is give the hub a spin. It doens't budge. Stuck but good.

I really twist on it & I can get it to go - but its definately tight at the caliper.

So I pull that one off thinking its junk.

I blow it out & start to look it over. The same brand new pads - But then I notice the pistons are all the way in - they have not slipped out at all. So if the pistons are not coming out how can it be so tight?

Well - I remember reading in one of the threads or the maual I was given about there being two different calipers for this year - the early ones have 15MM shoes and the older ones have 17MM shoes.

This is an early one and this caliper is a 15MM caliper & someone stuck 17MM shoes in there & jammed it up tight! Ha - I pulled the pads out (not as easy as I thought it would be) and clamped them in the vice & took the trusty file to them. I removed about 1MM from each pad & re-installed everything.

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Can you believe it? I bet the previous owner had someone put these pads on or he did it himself and parked the car because it wouldn't go right. I bet it sat for years. Here I've had it for 1 week & have put a $100 battery and $25 worth of fuel filters and a little time & its going like mad.

I don't know about the filing to free up the pads. They may have simply been crudded into place. You might have needed to scrape the calipers free of crud rather than the pads. Having one 15 mm caliper and one 17 mm caliper just sounds like too much of a bad not-quite-coincidence.

[BrassMonkey]

Originally Posted by Yak

I don't know about the filing to free up the pads. They may have simply been crudded into place. You might have needed to scrape the calipers free of crud rather than the pads. Having one 15 mm caliper and one 17 mm caliper just sounds like too much of a bad not-quite-coincidence.

I get it. The caliper pistons were completely seated. There was no crud. I blew out the cobwebs and cleaned them up. The two calipers do not match. I should have looked for the markings - but once I realized the pads were too thick I got side tracked.

Besides - the brakes are working great now! What more proof do I need!

I've got a ton of little things that need to be fixed now. I'm going to start new threads for them though.

Thanks for all the help guys. BTW - On Monday when I go to work I'll do the Italian tune up.