lol that thing doesn't do anything.

 

ok im frustrated... my parking break system has broken for the 4th time.

the first two times ("repaired" by an indie shop), i was told that a piece slipped out and need to be reconnected (i dont know which piece though but my understanding it was near the pedal).

the third time, i had it sitting for the winter season and it wouldn't disengage (it was stuck) and snapped loose again. this time i took it to the dealership and they "replaced" something and it cost 2-300.

today it broke for the 4th time when i was breaking on a hill.

i typically only do 2-3 clicks, but do use it often as i park on a hill daily.

---

question: do you guys have any advice for me to "guide" the dealership to fix this properly? i'm tired of wasting time and money re-fixing this... 4 times is way too much.

thanks!

 

I would demand it be properly fixed.. clearly until this point it has not been. From what you've said, it has not yet been properly fixed. The system isn't that complicated and it should be easy.

Did the dealer warranty their work for a year? Has it been past that?

 

I got tired of fixing mine and just learned to park with a tire angled on the curb and the car in gear.

 

it has been just over 2 months since the replacement.. so i'll keep my fingers crossed

you had recurrent problems too? do you know if it was the same part of the brake, "braking"

I'm droppin it off at the dealership today so we'll see what happens

 

I had some of the same issues as you. Twice the dealer had to fix something that "popped" out of place. Finally the spring in the adjustment assembly snapped (rusted through) and eventually I had the entire assembly replaced and still could barely get the parking brake to hold the car. I suspect the pads in the drum are shot, yet I stopped using it and it passed inspection so I didn't care to fix it.

Once you learn to live without it you won't even miss it. I live in a very hilly city, so even with a functioning ebrake in my new car I still angle the wheels and snug them to the curb, as I don't trust ebrakes anymore

 

ah ok... unfortunate but also nice to hear i'm not alone with this problem. i'm going to get it fixed hopefully on their dime.

but after that i'm just going to "baby" it.

i don't understand whats wrong with it... none of my other mercs have this problem. must be a design flaw.

 

Just replaced my rear rotors and pads on my 05 C230 SS. Only 3 issues....

1. Rotors were a pain to remove because they were seized onto the hub. A few solid whacks with a sledge hammer (gently) eventually got them loose.

2. But prior to that, I had a hell of a time removing one of the Torx-30 screws that hold the rotor to the hub. Even with PB Blaster, I managed to strip it, then tried to use an extractor bit, but it broke when trying to unscrew it. Tried that twice and both bits broke off. I eventually had to drill it out, so now my left side is without this screw. Not too big of a deal as the lug bolts hold the rotor pretty securely to the hub.

The new pads (Akebono ceramics) needed some massaging to get them in there, but everything now works great.....except for 1 thing....

3. The parking brake no longer holds my car in my mildly inclining driveway. Prior to replacing the brakes and rotors, it was holding fine. However, I did have to press the parking brake pedal nearly all the way to the floor, far more than the 3-5 ratchet clicks some people have posted they need to hold the car on an incline.

I just tested my parking brake pedal and I can get it to do 12 ratchet clicks. There is some grabbing because I can feel and hear a very slight hesitation to roll (almost like when you're at a stop light, and you lightly release the brakes and the car slightly moves). But it's nowhere enough to hold the car in place.

I'm thinking that with the old rotors being rusty and old, there was just enough friction in there where the e-brake shoes would grab, and now with the new rotors, the inside area of the rotor hat is really smooth, and there's not enough "rust friction" for the shoes to grab.

I'm wondering if I should remove the rear seat and see if I can adjust the cables in there, if that would help. I don't particularly feel like removing the rotors again to do any adjustments to the shoes. But if I have to, I have to. What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Cintoman

 

I too made the mistake of not taking a good look at the e-brake shoes when I had the rotors off ... first time mistakes.

But you don't have to remove the rotors to adjust the brake shoes. You can access the adjusting screw through one of the lug nut holes. It's a tight squeeze to get a narrow screwdriver in there, but I would suggest doing that first to make sure the adjusting screw is set properly. There are DIYs floating around that have pics on how to do this. Once you figure out how to turn the adjusting screw it's a one minute job

After that, if there is still a lot of travel in your e-brake pedal, then you can pull up the rear seat to take a look at, clean and adjust the cable yoke. Getting the screw covers off the front of the seat bottom was the most difficult part for me here, the rest was pretty simple.

The DIYs and manuals tell you to adjust the brake shoes first, followed by cable yoke adjustment. You may not need to do the yoke if the brake shoe adjustment takes up the slack -- however with all of the rust you are seeing on your rotors you may want to take a look at the yoke anyway, clean and lubricate it.

 

Thanks...

I haven't done this yet, but I need to soon since my inspection is up at the end of the month and my MB dealer has a deal for a free state inspection.

I was going to remove my rear wheels and adjust the star adjustment wheel using a small screwdriver like you mentioned above. However, I'm trying to figure out which way to do it for each side.

The pics in this post here: https://mbworld.org/forums/5003181-post6.html (I know these pics are for the W204, but the W203 looks the same) indicate "turn the right adjustment wheel against the direction of travel", and on the left side it's "in the direction of travel". I'm not sure which way they mean. In other words, if I'm working on my right rear wheel, do I push my screwdriver against the adjustment wheel to click it down to tighten or is up to tighten? And would it be the same on the left rear wheel?

The reason I ask is that a few weeks ago at an autoparts shop, I was looking thru the Haynes Manual for my W203, and checked out the section about adjusting the parking brake. IIRC, it stated that one side the adjustment to tighten was one way, and the other side it was the other way. It also mentioned about how many clicks we should do, and then something about backing off on a few clicks (example: do 8 clicks, then make sure you can't turn the rotor, then back off 3 clicks. So the net would be 5 clicks to adjust correctly). Of course, parking brake off during all this.

Does anyone know off-hand the amount of clicks, and which way to turn the adjustment screw on each side? It's probably dependent on a car-by-car basis and how worn the shoes are, but just figured I'd ask.

Thanks,
Cintoman

 

Okay, reading from my Haynes manual --

"Turn the adjuster wheel from bottom to top on the right rear wheel, and from top to bottom on the left rear wheel"

and

"Turn the star wheel adjuster until the wheel (tire) cannot be rotated [by hand], and then back off eight (8) notches."

Re: "net" -- It looks like there are 15 or 16 notches on the wheel, so if for some reason your parking brakes were very loose and it requires a couple turns of the screw to get them to snug, that's a lot of notches to adjust.

Re: adjusting the wrong way -- in one direction you should eventually reach the point where the brakes are snug and your tire won't rotate, and in the other direction you should eventually bottom out the adjuster screw. So if you end up adjusting a larger number in either direction and wondering if you're doing something wrong, you should still be safe.

 

jkowtko....thanks a bunch. Exactly what I needed to know. I'm going to be working on this tomorrow afternoon...as long as the rain holds out. I'll report my findings/results.

Thanks again,
Cintoman

 

My rear rotors are original at 139,650 miles. It probably wouldn't hurt to change them. But I am concerned about this issue so I look forward to the results.

 

How on earth did your rotors last that long? Do you even have rear brakes?

 

Well, finally got to doing this. Thought I could do it by just removing one of the lug bolts and peering thru to locate it, but it was next to impossible, especially with the crazy bright sunlight outside. So I removed each rear wheel, and still couldn't find the star wheel adjuster. Thought it'd be at the 12:00 position, but it turns out it wasn't. I was able to go thru the pictures I took when I did my rear brakes and then realized it was at the 2:00 position on the left wheel, and the 10:00 position on the right.

Even rotating the lug bolt hole to the location it was difficult to find, mostly because everything's uniformly coated in brake dust back there. But finally found them. When looking thru the hole, what you see is the spring that's below the adjuster. So you have to aim your screwdriver a little bit higher.

I clicked each side until I couldn't click it anymore and noticed tension on the adjuster. At that point, the rotor couldn't be moved. I then backed it out about 8 clicks, mounted the wheels, tried the e-brake, and it was better than before, but it was still going too far down when pressing the e-brake pedal. So I removed the wheels again, and repeated, backing off this time by only about 6 clicks. Works perfect now, and my inspection passed flawlessly.

Now a new problem....rear sunshade doesn't want to work now. Off to STFF for this one.

Thanks again all.
Cintoman

 

The rear pads on my car were worn out at 75,000 miles. I simply replaced the pads and didn't give it a second thought.

I'll be replacing the pads and rotors back there in about 10k miles.

The rear sunshade is a general POS on all the cars. Mine sticks.

 

Rear rotors last a long time. e brake not working is neglect. If lubrication & adjustments are made as scheduled you should never have a issue as long as wrong lug bolts are not used & a cable does not break.

 

I used the parking break Once, it Broke!
had it fixed and never used it again.

 

I figured out why my emergency brake wasn't working ...

I removed the right rotor, tried the parking brake, and the brake pedal would go to the floor as it spread the shoes apart beyond where they would normall travel when the rotor is on the car. So no problem there.

I put the right rotor back on and removed the left rotor. Tried the same thing with the parking brake. But it only went down a few notches before stopping.

I had my son push and release the parking brake repeatedly while I took a closer look at the assembly.

I noticed that the brake cable travel through the shackle (A 201 420 05 89) was limited ... the cable end would not move below the surface of the shackle. Something was preventing it from moving further in.

I did notice that the pin that connects the brake cable end to the shackle was not tight and would rest on the inside edge of the shackle as the cable pulled. On a hunch I pushed up on the pin as my son engaged the parking brake, and voila -- the cable travelled all the way through the shackle this time.

On the inside of the shackle there is a depression where the pin can sit in as the cable is pulling through the shackle. But the depression only goes in a small amount and then stops. Since this depression is on the bottom side of the cavity, the pin rests in it, and stops the cable from travelling further.

Kind of hard to describe this without a good image -- and I can't find one. I don't know why that depression is in there ... is it intended that the cable only travel a small mount through the shackle? In which case the shoes would have to be pretty close to binding ... I'm pretty sure I'm 8 notches away from snug.

I filed the edges of the depression a bit so the pin would move out of it, and the parking brake seems to be able to engage fully now.

 

Hey, I've changed my rear pads and rotors with ebc parts a while ago. I'm beyond the break-in point and followed all the steps. I changed them out because I was hearing a squealing noise from my rear passenger side while driving. I thought changing the brakes would've been the solution and letting the new parts break in, however, not so much. I did notice the metal piece opposite of the p-brake adjuster looked as if it were loose. Could the on and off squealing be coming from the hardware, or do I just need to adjust the brakes?
BTW
My parking brake grabs just fine, it clicks down about 8.