We have 40,000 miles on our 2013 ML 350 and the Check break pad indicator just started flashing. Anyone have any thoughts or experiences with that. Curious how much at the dealership or if I should just replace myself. If I replace myself, do you have any suggestions as to the best place to purchase the parts

 

IMHO it's most likely the Rear brake pads and the fronts probably have lots of life left in them. ......from personal experience. I had this message around 70k this year on a '14 ML350 Bluetec. Fronts..good and rears needed replacement. Done by the dealership.

 

In general, front brakes wear faster than rear brakes.
One way to confirm is to remove one of the front wheel and check the pads.

As for buying parts, I'd recommend the following -
autohausaz.com
RMeuropean.com

 

not necessarily anymore. not sure how the mb is, but my escalade ext was engineered to apply more force to rear to prevent brake dive. they wore out first. ron

 

Thanks, some were telling me that for mercedes you have to change the rotor when changing the pads. Is that true or can I just change the pads??

 

i have a 2016 gle. because that had to be done on my old M, i asked the sales rep about the new ones. per him (who i trust) still has to get done. good luck, ron

 

On any car, as long as the rotors are not warped (there's no shaking while braking) AND the rotors' thickness is within the spec, they don't need to be changed. Minimum rotor thickness is printed on the body of rotor.

You may not need to replace rotors on every time you change pads just because you are changing pads; may be every other time you change the pads. Again, this will depend on what I said above 2 conditions.

Only way to confirm any/all of this is by removing wheels and checking.

 

Agreed, there are exceptions to my statement.
I've never owned Cadillac cars, so, I'll take your word for it.

Only way to be sure is to remove one wheel from each axle and check.

 

MB did not replace the rear rotors on my ML. They said there was no need. The car was was out of warranty at that time and usually shops err on the side of safety on these things, so I assume the rotors were pretty good looking and not warped/ gouged.

I had a 2007 XK Jaguar (miss that car) and the first thing I noticed about the brakes, was there was a definite rearwards bias when coming to a stop. Quite the opposite of other cars I've owned where there was a noticable nose dive when braking. Times have changed.

I also wonder if Distronic, when holding a given speed going downhill, uses the rear brakes to slow the vehicle down to keep the given speed. Anybody know?

 

I have noticed that on the newer model cars , its the rear pads that wear quicker. It used to be the other way around, you usually replaced front pads two or three times before having to replace the rear. My recent experience with 2011 Mini is that the rears wear faster. Must be something to do with the new braking systems (stability control, etc) on the newer cars.

 

Did it myself rear pads only, dealer quoted $750, last time when I did brake pads was 20 years ago. Not a lot different now.
Didn't do rotors this time, they are in limits.

New tools, + parts 170$ and hour and a half of work. Make sure you get a caliper piston tool, 6$ at Amazon worked just fine to push the piston back.

Parts I bought from
http://www.mboemparts.com/auto-parts?mobile=1
Pads and one sensor.

There is a trick to put electric brakes into service mode. I was following this guy

Good luck.

 

My wife's 2 Infinitis (M35S, M37S) both ate rear brakes like I eat potato chips. Never heard the rear bias to prevent nose dives. Makes sense. Lear something new every day.

 

For the record - brake bias does not cause (or prevent) nose dive. Nose dive is a result of physics (inertia... Newton's First Law). Even if you were to completely disable the front brakes and only apply the rears, the car will still dive as it wants to continue moving forward and thus puts more pressure on the front. The opposite is true when you accelerate - the back squats down and the front goes up, regardless of whether you have a front-, all- or rear-wheel drive vehicle.

There is no rear brake bias on any MB vehicle (or for that matter any vehicle with properly functioning brakes - see http://stoptech.com/technical-suppor...alance-matters for a proper explanation why if you're so inclined). Furthermore, the brakes are designed so that they both provide the required amount of force on each axle and thus wear out at approximately the same rate. If either the fronts or rears wear out while the other axle has lots of brake material left, something is likely unbalanced or wrong with the car.

The Infiniti models mentioned by pjw has undersized brakes for the weight of the car and did wear out very quickly, but on both axles at the same rate. If you had different pads, rotors or even tires on one axle from the other then yes, one end would have more grip then the other and the brakes would wear out accordingly.

As to the OP's question - 40K miles for a set of brakes on a 5,500+ lb truck is well within the normal range. You can either replace them yourself or have a service shop / dealer do it - including installation it shoud run you about $1.5K - $2K if you need both pads and rotors on both axles. For the W166 ML, the OEM MB rotors and pads are only marginally more expensive than aftermarket, but they are well made and the rotors won't warp or wear out prematurely like they do with half of the cheaper options.