W202 Rear Brakes: Performance or Stock?

[Spinal]

Last week, I changed the front pads on my W202 and was planning to do the same wiht the rear this weekend.

When I took the rear wheels off, I noticed that the disks are pitted quite badly; so it's time for me to change the rear disks...

Given the chance, I'm considering going for vented or other "perfomance enhancing" brakes; but am not sure if I can do this without also changing the front disks - which are in perfectly good condition (and I don't want to change!)

Also, what disks would you recomend? MB-official? Aftermarket?

M.

 

[grober]

Remember that the rear brake discs incorporate a mini brake drum for the handbrake. If you are renewing the discs you may wish to renew the small handbrake brake shoes and associated assemblies springs etc at the same time. It makes sense to do this at the same time as you renew the discs. If your car has done a lot of miles the best thing to uprate your brakes ( i.e. get them back to new spec from factory) is to treat your car to a set of new/reconditioned rear calipers. They tend to take a lot of punishment in the form of corrosion and tend to partially seize up in the long run. MB parts are fine or ATE (OEM to Merc) from ECP or GSF.

 

[Kompressor_Dude]

Just replaced mine with Olly (at PCS). Callipers were rotten so had new discs, pads and calipers in the end.

From our experience I'd use OEM parts and not bother uprating to Greenstuff/grooved discs etc. Olly has put these on his C Class said that they just create break squeal, without noticeable improvements in braking.

By all means fit uprated to the front when they eventually wear but on the rear you're best bet is original parts for price/performance trade-off.

As long as each axel is the same setup I wouldnt worry about the front/back matching. The majority of the braking is done at the front anyway.

 

[Spinal]

OK, so I'll take apart the calipers this weekend and have a look at them. The car is moderately high mileage (95k) so it may be worth replacing the calipers.

Regarding the hand-brake - all I need is a set of shoes and springs, right? (I'm considering euroCarParts:
Rear solid disks: £15/£21 (Eicher/ATE)
Handbrake shoes: £12/£18
Handbrake Springs: £5/£7

So seems like a pretty cheap thing to do; so I might as well do it

The calipers are just under £60 each - but they are reconditioned units; and if I change them I want new ones, so I might give the dealer a call and get some prices for those.

M.

 

[Kompressor_Dude]

When we took my calipers apart the lower section was completely destroyed. My car has 145k and they looked like the originals, so you might be ok at 95k. Looked like they'd collected water in the recess and rusted away, there was no way a new set of pads were going in there safely though!

All this meant I had to leave the car in Olly's way and drive home in a Ford Ka, so make sure you've got all the parts and the car's in a good spot before you take the old ones apart just in case they're ruined!

 

[Spinal]

I've got 4 cars and 3 motorbikes in my driveway/garage (well... 3 cars and 2 motorbikes if you don't count the ones I'm currently working on) so I'm not too worried about having my car out of use for a few days

Might be a good opportunity to take the bike for a spin - it's been a while since I saw a sunny day!

M.

 

[vijilants]

As long as each axel is the same setup I wouldnt worry about the front/back matching. The majority of the braking is done at the front anyway.

As long as you don't mind accelerated brake wear due to the uneven match. Uneven matching cause one set of brakes to work in a different manner performance wise to the other set, and this causes accelerated brake pad wear.

If you want optimum braking, use the same pads front and rear.

 

[popuptoaster]

I wouldn't bother with the back if yuor gonna uprate the front at any point, from experiance of track cars and mates with proper race cars you usually need less braking at the back when you improve the fronts as more stopping power throws more weight forwards and unloads the rear end so extra stopping power at the back will just make the car tail happy, a fwd Alfa saloon car racer i know of can actually achieve faster lap times with its rear barkes locked off completely for example, obviously the effect is magnified in FWD cars, but it does effect rwd ones as well.

90% of modern cars are only fitted with rear discs as its easier to get ABS to work properly, most of em dont need rear discs as they hardly do anything, hence the rear calipers quite often seize up from lack of use.

Its a differnet matter if your going to adjust the suspension and fit an adjustable brake bias set up of course.