I decided to replace my front and rear pads, as I was getting tired of the constant sticky black dust from the factory pads. Since there already is a DIY on the front pads, I will only document the rear pad replacement. Sorry about the mediocre quality of the cellphone photos.

Here is how my wheels look after a week of driving:



I read a lot of good things about the Akebono Euro ceramics, and decided to give them a try. The part number for the 2011 GLK rear pads is 1341A.

I won't bore you with jacking up the car and removing the rear tires. Assuming you get past that, you'll see this view of the rear caliper:



Pop off the spring:



Now you have to remove one of the caliper mounting bolts. The upper one is shown below, it's inside the rubber barrel just left to the sticker with "15" on it:



Pop off the small cap, and inside you'll see a bolt with an allen head (7mm):



After removing the bolt, you can pivot the caliper out of the way:



Now pop out the inner pad from the caliper, and remove the outer pad from the caliper mounting bracket. Clean the abutments on which the pads slide. My rotors had some wear, but not enough to warrant replacement (the fronts were another story).

To retract the piston, I use the "open the bleed screw and expel the fluid as you push back the piston" approach. I just don't like pushing fluid from the caliper back into the hydraulic system. So I cracked open the bleed screw (11mm wrench), and pushed in on the piston:



I put some moly lube onto the surfaces where the pads ride on the caliper bracket. Then pop the new inner pad into the caliper:



Put the new outer pad into the caliper bracket:



Rotate the caliper back down and reinstall the mounting bolt:



I torqued the bolt to about 25 ft-lbs (can't find any torque specs for the Benz to save my life). Then put the little cap back onto the barrel and reinstall the springs shown in the second photo in this post.

The passenger side has a wear sensor:



You can pop it out from the pad:



Then pull the other end out of the connector. Here are the old and the new sensors side by side.



Plug the new sensor into the connector, push the other end into the pad, and you're done (sorry about the focus):



Put the Wheels back on, lower the car, torque the lug nuts, and go for a test drive.

All in all, extremely easy - took me longer to write this up than to do the job.

 

Another great DIY write up.
Good work Leon. :cheers

 

Great directions.

 

Good write-up! I have utilised the Akebano on other cars & the reduction of dust is amazing. Be interested to hear how the brakes feel to you after a week or so. Found that it is best to de-glaze the brake rotors to get the pads to wear in effectively or replace them.

 

I just did my brakes (F&R, pads & rotors and fluid flush) and I am surprised you didn't include a shot of the unusual clip mounts of the rear inside pads.

I looked your write-up over to avoid any surprises but that system was a big one since I have never seen it on any other car...

 

I'm going by memory now, but don't the inside pads just snap into the piston?

 

Great job

 

They do, and I thought that was pretty unusual...

 

Ah, got it. I think 3 out of my 4 cars have this mounting system, so it seemed normal to me .

 

I think the last rear brake job I did was on a '69 E-Type, and that was so long ago (and I was probably so annoyed at having to drop the rear end) I don't remember anything about the pads.

The rest of the write-up was very helpful... thanks!