**Vibration when braking**
 

Hello everyone, I purchased a 2015 S550 sedan about a month. Everything is great except for one thing. When I'm driving between 45mph-55mph and when I brake to slow down I feel vibration coming from the brake pedal. Today my wife was riding in the passenger seat and she also felt the vibration so it's coming from front end of the car. It's only a month old I'm not sure this is happening because the brakes are new. Should I take it to the dealer? Any help would be great!!

By chance do your breaks squeal at all when you are backing up first thing in the morning (usually if it is cold outside it really squeals)?


Here is my experience on my 2014 S550 4matic. When I would back up in the morning my brakes would screech so bad people two blocks away probably could hear the brakes There is a warranty replacement for this issue. I had all four sets of brake pads replaced under warranty. Before I had the brake pads replaced, I had pulsating like you are referring to. Once they replaced my brake pads under warranty the pulsating went away.


So I believe these are somehow tied together since my pulsating went away after the warranty brake pad replacement.

I spoke to the Mercedes tech Today. He said it sounds like my rotors got warped and they are putting better rotors now??!! I just couldn't believe it. This shouldn't be happening to a month old car. Hopefully this gets fixed right away....

I think Mercedes warranty on brake pads/rotors is only 12 months so it's good that you caught the problem soon. The tech is right, vibration while braking usually indicates warped rotors.

On our 2014 we had the pads swapped out due to the squeaking issue and also changed out the front rotors due to the slight pulsing. This was done right around the 1 yr mark for us. They quickly took care of it.

does anyone know what the TSB is for this? Thank you.

Warped Rotors
 

Yes, I have a 2015 S550 and the front rotors and pads were replaced at 9K miles due to warped rotors. Technician identified the problem on a test drive for another issue (heavy downshift from 5 to 4), I had not even notice the brake problem.

Vibration When Braking!!
 

I have my 2015 S550 4matic in the shop right now for a second time due to the same issue of vibration when braking. I bought this car on June the 26th 2015 with 40 miles. On the 11th of September 2015 at 5471 miles all the brakes and rotors were replaced because they were "warped". Now the car is in the shop again just 3000 miles after the first replacement for the same issue and I have been told the brakes and rotors have to be replaced again. Imagine that!! changing brakes and rotors every 5000 miles on a six figure car and there is no recall!!. I understand it is covered under a 12000 mile waranty but MB should please put good brakes and rotors in the S class. Except MB is saying brakes and rotors are only good of 5kmiles on the new S class. I was given another S class loaner this morning but I had to turn it down and opt for an E class because I can't stand those vibrations! If there is a permanent solution to this problem I will be glad to know

The brake rotors are the culprit 95% of the time.

I have a 2015 S600 (8500 kms) which developed a vibration upon braking. Dealer replaced front brake pads, (supposedly) tested the car, and advised me that the problem had been fixed. I drove the car and found no change whatsoever! Dealer then replaced the rear brakes (not sure what specifically) and problem was fixed.

Most probably the rotors.

S550 rotor issue not breaks
 

It's not a breaking issue its the rotors. I've had my 2015 s550 for a year and have had my rotors and breaks repaired every 3-4K miles amongst my tires are only lasting 4 months. 😬 It is in on its 5th repair and Germany as of today has recognized the issue. I hope this helps.

My 2014 E550 warped two sets of rotors in 30k miles. Heavy braking from high speeds seems to be the cause. My solution was to get a 2016 E63 S AMG. The AMG cars have much better brakes and seem to be impervious to the continually re-occurring warped rotors that plagues the non-AMG cars. Frankly, I find it inexcusable that the non-AMG cars have this problem. The calipers and rotors look impressive, but with any kind of repeated high speed braking they eventually warp.

what I was told was that the American market has a completely different rotor to the European. Yes the AMG's have the perforated calipers to allow for faster cooling, why they don't put them on all cars who knows. My car only has 29k miles and had been through 4 sets of rotors, 3 tires and two sets of breaks.

Does sound like rotors. It will happen again

I just returned from an approx. 900 mile, round trip in my 2015 S550. I used the Distronoc extensively and I believe that on down grade roads, the system engages the brakes almost constantly, resulting in warped rotors, which produced a vibration when braking at highway speeds. The car has 15K miles on it and the dealer replaced the front pads & rotors under warranty, no questions asked.

It is amazing to me, that a company like MB could find themselves with a weak link, in the way of easily warped brake rotors, on their flagship sedan, after so many years of producing similar systems. Does every single system need to completely change with each new model? One would think that you get brakes engineered to perfection and then LEAVE THEM THEM BE! Why fix something that isn't broken? Oh well.

My '14 S550 makes the screeching sounds in the morning when braking in reverse. However, it has 28k on it and the dealer told me that the brake pads are not covered under warranty. Curious how you were able to get your pads replaced under warranty?

My rotors and pads were replaced under warranty, school bus style squealing, with about 3000 miles

Probably too late but try bedding the brakes, find a highway late night and have fun

Just checked my carfax and noticed that the previous owner never had to replace any of the braking components throughout their ownership, so looks like the car has been okay till now lol.

Driver is the culprit 99% of the time.

And hard stop where you end up at 0MPH and have to stay there for more than 10 seconds can warp rotors--check that, what happens is that the pads being clamped on a hot rotor allow the rest of the rotor to cool while the clamped part heat soaks. The difference between the cooling rotor and the hot rotor is what causes the distortion.

There are several solutions:
a) If you have to brake hard, take the car out of gear so you can release the brakes without going forward.
b) 6-8 stops from 90MPH-30MPH as hard as you can brake and as hard as the car will accelerate as fast as the car will accelerate will unwarp most rotors. (diesels not applicable--lack of acceleration, Don't do this within 20 miles of any city, watch for constabulary forces.)
c) drive in such a manner that you don't have to stop all that hard.

Interestingly I notice in the German Price list an option U29 - Brake system with larger front brake discs for the fairly modest price of Euro 297. The catch however is "Not in conjunction with AMG line (950)", which option I believe is very common in the US.

I have recently noticed a grinding noise during the last few feet of braking, just before the car stops. This happens after about ten minutes of in town driving with lots of stops at fairly low speed. It is a similar sound to what you would get when braking with worn brake pads, but they all have at least a quarter inch of pad material left. This only happens when the brakes are warmed up. At times it feels like this is accompanied by a bit of brake fade as it feels like the car struggles to stop. There is no noise when reversing and only occasional noise when braking whilst driving forward. I do not really sense any vibration. Does this perhaps sound familiar to any of you? I have the car booked in next week but it will be helpful if anyone has experienced a similar issue and knows what caused it

Stop the ‘Warped’ Rotors Myth!

Myths take hold *because either A) they seem completely logical or B) they are so often repeated that they just become common knowledge. The warped rotor myth is a little bit of both. A rotor that contributed to a pulsation condition certainly appears “warped.” Plus, everyone says it — even technicians that know the rotor isn’t *really warped will say it as shorthand.

Rotors are cast in extreme heat — three to five times greater than the most aggressive braking situation. Physically “warping” a rotor would require a similar application of extreme heat, which is impossible.

Obviously rotors aren’t invincible. They can crack, break and develop irregularities that lead to pulsation, but all of those problems start to develop in other ways that need a technician’s touch.

Starting today, remove “warped rotor” from your vocabulary. Instead, you should be both looking for and educating yourself about these terms:

Lateral Run-out:

Disc Thickness Variation (DTV):

Cold Brake Roughness:

The problem with myths is that are convenient. Assuming you need to wear a hat in winter to avoid catching a cold because your grandmother told you that a thousand times is much easier than actually researching the science behind it. Just put a hat on and hope for the best.

That mentality is troublesome when it comes to brakes — saying a rotor is warped easily puts the blame on an ineffective part that needs to be replaced when that isn’t the case. Understanding that a warped rotor is a myth is to understand that there are other causes for the braking condition and additional work is needed to do the job right. This may seem like a matter of semantics, but mis-characterizing the root problems of pulsation just perpetuates the myth.

Now that you fully UNDERSTAND these terms and have read all the way down to this point, you can understand that the symptoms here are ALL related to lateral run-out (uneven wear on the rotor surfaces) and has been caused/perpetuated by rotor-hub misalignment. I can't begin to relay to you the number of multiple-decades-experienced professionals that have yet to understand these terms and effect the proper remedy, which leaves the consumer coming back to the repair shop after 3-6 months/5K-10K miles for the SAME problem/symptom. Replacing the rotors will effectively restart the uneven wear process, but in so many thousand miles, it will return and perpetuate itself. You'll find yourself going through this over and over and over and over and over and over again, until the car is out-of-warranty and you are either paying out of your own pocket or you end-up trading the car out of frustration and/or economics.

The reality of the matter is that if you hit a curb, pothole, etc. an ever so slight (recall above about minute thicknesses and measurements) change in the geometry of the suspension and/or steering, but mainly the axle hub. With a new set of rotors the thickness of the rotor is uniform on the surface, but as the minute difference in the hub mated against the rotor, the rotor is ever so minutely rotating squarely within the caliper, and over time this repeated process wears the rotor surface unevenly. You follow me so far? So, as the difference in wear across the surface of the rotor continues, you will end-up with a disc thickness variation (DTV). The reason that this keeps coming back over and over again is that the cause of the problem is not a bad rotor, but rather a misalignment between the hub and the rotor. In older cars, this minute run-out was relatively unnoticeable until the run-out was excessive. But on today's cars and their advanced braking systems and suspensions, it's infinitely more noticeable. The automotive industry has a solution, it's called an 'on-the-car brake lathe' and the process is called "rotor matching". Now, before you go screaming "Mercedes-Benz rotors can NOT be lathed!!!"...hear me out. What these specialized lathes do is match the rotor to the hub of the car to insure that the assembly of the two has no or 'within-tolerance' run-out. A lot of shops are adopting this technology and most dealerships now have these in their arsenal. The machine attaches to the hub/rotor assembly and shaves whatever number of microns off of the rotor to insure that the entire assembly is true and does not run-out/vibrate within the caliper, causing uneven wear resulting in DTV. This newer technology is being applied when new brakes are installed with new rotors to vehicles now to insure there is no consumer returns/complaints.

I'm not sure I have effectively relayed exactly what all is going on with this process, but I did find a video which briefly describes the cause of the problem and how rotor matching works .

This hub-rotor alignment process solved the drive-ability/braking pulsation problems with the W222's in our fleet and NONE, ZERO, ZILCH of the vehicles has had a recurrence of these braking pulsation symptoms between brake jobs.

Please allow me to add my 2 cents and some sound advice on the W222. I'm 100% certain that driving habits and heavy breaking will cause the rotors to warp from the friction and excessive heat from pad to rotor. The real culprit is the bad engineering issue with the Mercedes W222 is: The DISTRONIC PLUS with lane assist and LANE KEEPING ASSIST PLUS as well as adaptive cruise control. (EXCESSIVE, EXCESSIVE, EXCESSIVE, UNECCESSARY BRAKING!) is able to accelerate automatically and apply up to 50% braking power depending on the traffic flow. If the system detects additional braking power is necessary to avoid a collision, it will warn the driver to brake more sharply. They say it's a safety feature, I say its not needed and causes premature wear. When you have these features enabled, it applies breaks more than normal driving would and this results in excessive and unnecessary braking which causes more friction, heat etc. The result: premature wear and warping. (Lateral run-out)
You proud owners of the W222 have obviously raved, enjoyed and shown people the tech features of your beautiful Mercedes and feel good about the technology. Guess what? If you know how to drive, you don't need these features. Turn that crap off immediately! In other words DISABLE the features altogether!, as you have options on your steering wheel settings and controls to do so. You do not need to have them enabled. I guarantee this will minimize the brake issues and prolong the life of your pads and rotors. (I will bet every dollar I have on this fact.)

Brake vibration issues W222
 

Please allow me to add my 2 cents and some sound advice on the W222. I'm 100% certain that driving habits and heavy breaking will cause the rotors to warp from the friction and excessive heat from pad to rotor. The real culprit is the bad engineering issue with the Mercedes W222 is: The DISTRONIC PLUS with lane assist and LANE KEEPING ASSIST PLUS as well as adaptive cruise control. (EXCESSIVE, EXCESSIVE, EXCESSIVE, UNECCESSARY BRAKING!) is able to accelerate automatically and apply up to 50% braking power depending on the traffic flow. If the system detects additional braking power is necessary to avoid a collision, it will warn the driver to brake more sharply. They say it's a safety feature, I say its not needed and causes premature wear. When you have these features enabled, it applies breaks more than normal driving would and this results in excessive and unnecessary braking which causes more friction, heat etc. The result: premature wear and warping. (Lateral run-out)
Us proud owners of the W222 have obviously raved, enjoyed and shown people the tech features of your beautiful Mercedes and feel good about the technology. Guess what? If you know how to drive, you don't need these features. Turn that crap off immediately! In other words DISABLE the features altogether!, as you have options on your steering wheel settings and controls to do so. You do not need to have them enabled. I guarantee this will minimize the brake issues and prolong the life of your pads and rotors. (I will bet every dollar I have on this fact.)