PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - HELP!!! Something has finally broken down!

spark3542 · #78 03-05-2007, 08:56 AM

The point, and therefore value, of a forum is to help in an "unknown" area to identify what's important and what isn't.

Sway bars are not important. Don't take that out of context. You want to have sway bars on your car, it makes a significant difference in handling. But you don't need them to drive. To repair them, you can use a piece of wood and two carriage bolts and it performs just as well as factory. That's what I mean by not important. Don't dwell on whether you made the right sway bar link decision.

Brakes are important. Unless you have a clean, well lit, and properly tooled environment, I wouldn't risk rebuilding a caliper myself. Buying a rebuilt is just too logical. Doing something poorly during the caliper rebuild can have much worse effects than putting the sway bar link in wrong.

"rotor tilted" is confusing to me. Unless the whole bearing assembly is tilted with reference to the backing plate, then your wheel would wobble driving down the road. If wear is uneven on the rotor or the pads, then I would replace the rotors, pads, and calipers and be done with it. As someone previously stated, worn parking brake shoes are no big deal, because they are not designed to do any functional braking, just keeping the car still while parked.

You should be able to rotate the rotor by hand (with parking brake released), but it will take some work. It won't spin without resistance. This is normal. If both tires are in the air, it should rotate the opposite tire in the opposite direction. If the transmission is in neutral, it may instead spin the driveshaft. If it takes "tools" or unusual force to rotate a rotor, then something is wrong. If there's is significant metal-on-metal sound, then something is wrong.

Find the root cause, but don't overthink the problem. It usually is fairly simple, and it's not often that two things break at the same time. Keep that in mind as you troubleshoot.