Larry,

Thanks for the input about riding the brake pedal. That is one habit I have assiduously avoided. Can't speak for my wife, however; anyhow, I do better than 90% of our driving and as stated earlier, neither of us drives hard. Perhaps Steve's point about the difference in wear patterns holds here. I discovered my caliper problem while driving between Baton Rouge and Houston. The car was pulling severely to the right. When I checked, I found the outside brake pad was tightly locked against the disc

Steve,

Thanks for the clarification. In a previous post I referred to a "rib" on the seal that pulled back the piston. I didn't realize that it was only the basic seal itself.

As to ease of rebuilding calipers, it has been a long time, but I seem to recall that the exterior of the piston has a cutout that has to be installed at a specific angle in order to prevent squeal. I believe my biggest problem was that I could not get the precise angle. I made a template to be used to check the angle. Once the piston was installed, it could not be turned and had to be extracted, repositioned and reinstalled. I don't know how many of these cycles I went through before giving up and just saying, "That's going to have to be close enough." It has worked all right, so I guess it was "close enough".

Thanks to all for the input.


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Ted
1979 240D
160,000 miles