benstefa1

Hi Everyone,

I brought my 2015 S550 (just purchased in August 2018 44K miles) into the dealer for its service. I am glad I prepurchased the maintenance X3. It was a certified preowned car with one owner.
All looked good on the carfax at the time of purchase. I noticed they had installed new brakes and rotors on all wheels and thought everything was good.

So, during this first service I asked them to look at the brakes as the car was pulsing when coming to a stop. They did as requested and informed me they would be replacing all rotors again under warranty as they should not have needed to be replaced after they just installed new rotors only 10K miles ago (just prior to me purchasing the car).

So, my question to the group is - has anyone else had trouble with Mercedes brake rotors on the S550? Is this a common issue or an anomoly?

Regards,

Katie22

NOPE. my 2016 Maybach is heavier than your car but aside from that its similar. I personally myself changed the rear brake pads and the rotors were well within the thickness tolerances. The fronts were not ready to be changed.

When i did the job there was no warped rotors. I might add that the car has 60000 miles on it and 18 of those miles were driving rather hard on a F1 race track.........

mysticblu999

I like this! A Maybach owner who changes their own brakes and drives it hard!

Mitch Alsup

The most common cause of warpage is "<lack of> Driver Education".

a) if you ever get the brakes HOT you cannot hold pressure on the brake pedal while the rotors are cooling.

So, say you are driving down a long hil and are using the brakes all the way down and you get the brakes nice and HOT. At the end there is a STOP sign and you decide to obey the law.....
The rotors are HOT, so do you know hot to stop and not warp the rotors? You stop normally using the brakes and flick the tranny into park! take your foot off the brakes and allow the rotors to cool without induced stress. When it is time to go, you flick the tranny into drive and proceed apace.

b) You can even remove brake rotor warpage if you can get the brakes HOT enough. 6-10 sprints from 60-120-60 as fast as the engine and brakes can accomplish, then drive at normal speeds for 10 minutes without touching the brakes at all (and this includes Distronic). Just be sure to do this on a road where constabulary observation is LOW.

RJC

I've had rotors warp on a few brand new vehicles in under 10k ,and we are very careful never to wash any of our vehicles when the brakes are hot, as that can warp them.

benstefa1

Everyone,

Thank you for your replies. They were very insightful. I will keep a watch out during times of brake usage.

This leads me to another question, can the distronic system heat up the breaks in heavy traffic and not realizing it cause this warpage?

I picked up the car yesterday from the dealer and it drives like it was new off the showroom floor once again. They installed vented rotors on the front and solid rotors on the back with al new pads and sensors. I attempted to bed in the new break pads as suggested by aother forum member on the way home.
Hopefully, I will be successful at this inital bedding and it will lead to many years of troublefree service. Mercedes did reference an L-1 bulletin in the replacement lingo? Any one have any insight into this?

Thanks Again,
B

absent

Where you live might be a factor too.
I had warped rotors in SL65 and S63 (2008 and 2011) at 8k miles and 9k miles respectively.
Frequent hard braking from 100mph plus to a full stop (returning from my warehouse at 5AM on Tollway, with no cops ever around, to office in suburbs, about 20 miles of Le Mans pace).
Red hot brakes cooling down on a car parked outside in freezing temps did it.
Now, I would never order a car without CCBs.

1bad540

I doubt u warpred the rotors, Im sure u had material bedded in but to warp a rotor on a daily driven car is almost impossible.

Nice Ride

If you don't use a Torque Wrench when changing wheels, or clean the hub when changing rotors. All causes for Warped sensation...

superpop

I have seen some tire shop chimps torque the lugs down to about 200 foot pounds thinking they were doing a favor. This can definitely cause warping of rotors. Also, overheating the rotors and then going through a deep puddle and quenching the disks with cold water can cause a warp condition as well. Very common up here in the Seattle area.

seamus2154

Winner! This is one the main reasons for warped rotors. If wheels are not tightened in the correct sequence and at the correct torque rating....then it's a ticking time bomb to warped rotors. Then when they do get hot, they are stressed wrong, and warp. So they gave you new rotors and brakes but the tech probably just used an impact wrench putting the rims back on and pushed it through. This is the most likely scenario being all was new if you didn't beat on the car.