But the front & rear brake dust on my C 350 seems to be about equal and relatively light compared to my last MB. My car still only has about 320 miles but even so I was expecting the usual heavy brake on the front wheels. The front wheels of my previous MB was like a least twice the dust of the rear wheels. Maybe the vented rotors????

 

most likely MB is using a different pad formulation for the new brakes. The material the pads are made out of contribute to how much dust is given off. Cross drilled rotors do not reduce the amount of brake dust given off. (cross drilled and vented are different)

Good to hear the new brakes dust less though

 

the new c class also use more rear brk when stopping reduces the wear on the frt brakes, down side is it increases the rear brake wear

 

Yeah it almost appears the rears have more dust than the fronts.

 

Way more dust, for me, in the rears.

 

I agree that the W204 produces less dust than any German car we've owned in the past 30 years, and noticeably less than our '02 W203 C240.

By a very slight margin, I'd say the rears produce a bit more dust than the fronts - but for me, the important observation is that there is just less dust, period. Yes, they obviously changed the pad formulation this time around.

 

All the euro cars ive owned (BMW E38, E39, E46 M3, Audi A4) always produced a lot of dust. In fact, I made it a point to get graphite colored S-Line rims on the A4 so I'm not washing the rims every week. lol

All the japanese cars I've owned (Honda Civic, Toyota 4Runner, Acura TL) would take a month to produce the same amount of dust a euro car would in a week!

 

^Ya but why would you want to stop in a honda civic? i would never touch the break and hide my face so no one would see me. JK! i drove a minivan before this i just had to bust chops

 

Funny this thread came up. When I first washed Honey's car I noticed the rears had just as much brake dust as the fronts. This has never been the case with my ML or CLK. I though it was my imagination.

 

hahah it was my first car ('97) i still have it believe it or not! i keep it to keep my insurance costs down on my other cars lol.

it comes in handy going to Warrior games and whenever I have to go to places like walmart, chinatown, etc.

 

Rear dust is far more verus front dust. First car I have ever had that displayed that type behavior...

 

i have a ton of brake dust on the rears and minimal amounts on the front.. man, if these put out less than other models, i would hate to have the other ones.. cuz my brake dust gets pretty darn bad after about a week.

 

I can't understand for the life of me why MB allows this problem to go on.

 

I'm just hoping if there is indeed less dust that the brakes will have a good life.

How many miles does a C-Class brakes usually go before being worn out? How much is break service at a MB dealer (I'm scared)? ha-ha.

 

Because IT'S NOT CONSIDERED A PROBLEM IN ANY MARKET BUT OURS. Only Americans seem to obsess about this. MB has stated repeatedly that they want to minimize rotor wear and balance the three things that matter - overall braking effectiveness, pad wear, and rotor wear.

Yes, every European car I've owned generated more dust than our Japanese cars - they also had better braking performance.

I can tell you this is the least "dusty" MB I've owned since the beginning....which as you can see, goes back a long, long way.

The only car that really stands out in my experience about brake dust was our Toyota Prius - it produced the least dust I've ever seen, because of the re-gen braking. Front pads, even though thinner than average when new, looked like they would last at least 100k miles. The brakes just didn't seem to wear at all. I recently helped a friend put new tires/wheels on her Prius, and at 30k miles, the front pads looked like new.

In any case, MB does not consider this a "problem" to be solved - nor do any of the other German car makers.

 

There's no good answer to your question, because EVERYTHING depends on how the car is used. Our '02 C240 was on track to get at least 50k from the front pads, more on the rear. Many people need new pads at 20k. We do very little pure city driving....our C300 has 5500 miles on it, and 4700 of those miles are long-distance freeway driving....very little brake wear. What's "typical" or "average"? You've got me....

 

^+1

 

Mine also - way more brake dust on the rear than the front.

 

Simple reasoning: C300 is a rear wheel drive car (even in the 4matic), so there will be more brake dust on the rears. If it was front wheel, it would have more brake dust in the front.

 

Correct reasoning: Both front wheel, rear wheel and all wheel drive cars will have more brake dust on the fronts. This is simply due to the fact that as you brake, the weight shifts forward and the fronts do most of the work.

The reason why our cars have more on the rears is due to electronic brake proportioning (EBP) which brakes the rears slightly harder than the fronts to make the car feel more stable in straight line stops.

 

My bad, excuse my ignorance haha. I never got into the real reasoning so it seemed like a plausible reason. So do all MB cars have this EBP?

So basically in a nutshell, we have more brake dust in the rears to make braking more luxurious and to reduce dive...ya?

 

That's cool, at least it seemed logicial...

I don't know for sure but I would expect EBP to be a standard feature on any new Benz. Anybody know??

 

Here's some basic reading about EBP (also known as EBD):
http://www.counterman.com/Article/80...ution_ebd.aspx

 

It is to laugh.

 

My 2009 build date is 10/08, 4 months after the cut-off for the replacemetn of the brakes. I get minimal brake dust on the front, but I can wash my rims, and within 1-2 days my rears are completely covered with black dust, and the rear bumper of my car... It is so annoying. When I bring it up to my service advisor they make B.S. excuses that the brakes are soft and mercedes proved this is normal... Only one S.A. at a different dealership knew about the TSB, but said it was no applicable for my car because it was in 10/08, not before 06/08... Bull, they obviously didn't put the new brake pad design on my vehicle because my sister jsut got the 2011 w204, and she can go for weeks without any brake dust showing...