W201 brake issues?
 

I just finished putting back my 190e together from sitting about a year and a half. Over that period of time, I refinished every single piece of the suspension/brakes including rebuilding the 4 calipers and new front pads (rears were a year old, so I put them back afterwards). When I dropped the diff, I broke the ABS sensor so I got a secondhand one. I also changed the rear brake hardlines and put 4 SS braided hoses.

I first started to drive the car, and the brakes are very spongy. The fronts bled okay, but the rears seemed kinda low on pressure. I knew about that thing where you had to have the reservoir filled to the absolute brim to get fluid at the back, but even doing so I felt like there was not a lot of pressure coming out of the rear bleeders. Is there a special bleeding procedure that needs to be done with those cars?

Did you rebuild the master cylinder of did you let it run dry? The forward cylinder/rear brakes section of the master cylinder is a bear to bleed. Maybe bleed the cylinder first then the calipers. Just to be sure, the rear calipers have the bleed screws on top, right?

Sixto
83 300SD
98 E320 wagon

It's easy to run the rear res. dry while bleeding. The only way to see the rear res. level is to look at the inside very rear of the res - about the last quarter-inch. In addition to filling the res. to at least the bottom of the fill port you need to rock the res. back and forth to get it past the baffle and into the rear res.

Do this while watching the inside very rear of the res. to be sure you are getting fluid into the rear portion of the res.

Duke

Like others have said you can run it dry but once you put fluid back in it seems to work its self out with minimal trouble. A pressure bleeder is a big help too.

Ok maybe I can try a seringe to get fluid in the back parts? I was trying to keep the fluid level right before it would leak out from the top, but maybe I didn't succeed. I'll try again and let you know.