Hello I have a 2018 s560 with only 18k miles but the pads need to be changed. I see ferodo makes the pads for our car although it doesn’t show they are oem supplier I know they were a few years ago. I was wondering if these pads are ok… most shops refuse to put anything but oem Benz pads because they say they will squeak. Any advice on this or anyone with experience using ferodo on this gen? I don’t want squeaks because then I’ll likely pay again and just get Benz oem I would like to save money if possible however and don’t know how much longer I’ll keep the car.

 

Yep ferodo are great, all MB pads squeak regardless of who makes them. It's the same metallic compounds BMW/Porsche/Audi/MB and some Lexus use. OEM supplier always changes at all times so its pointless to pinpoint the exact one and just trust a list of OEM's that work with Mercedes. Textar/ATE/Brembo/Zimmerman/Pagid/Jurid/Ferodo are all 100% combat reliable.

I have most of the experience in the 222 platform but nothings going to change and Ferodo isn't going to R&D a brand new compound to stop another big Mercedes sedan in a long line of big Mercedes sedans.

If you really want to save on brakes and noise switch to ceramic. Has the sensor fired or is it just noisy? The brakes are noisy around then, you have to brake a little later and harder to flatten the pads every now and then it's counterintuitive to how one expects to drive an S Class but I've been doing this for a while. You will also have to replace the rotors with the pads. Powerstop makes really excellent OEM design rotors and carbon ceramic pads. They'll warranty them with a replacement if you're not happy with them.

 

Ive been pretty lucky with oem Benz pads they never squeaked for me. The oem that came with the car didn’t squeak until now but they are almost to the metal so I expect that no light on yet though. I recently put some very inexpensive pagid pads on my e coupe (before I had oem Benz pads that made no noise) and they squealed like crazy.. I switched to Brembo ceramic and the squeaking is gone but I sacrifice some brake responsiveness with the ceramic… I prefer the semi metallic. Also was wondering why the rotors must be changed with each pad change? I had an Indy look and they showed me some wear sensors that I never knew rotors had and that they were fine… They only recommended pads.

 

were those pads with fresh rotors?

there just isn't a ton of thickness in the brake disc between max and min thickness so you can't go pad after pad like you can with other cars, the semi metallics have a lot of copper/iron wads in them which do most of the braking so they cut deep grooves over time so if you try to get another pad setup you can get squealing early from the surface mismatch. I've used pagid pads on Aston Martin's, Porsche and Mercedes. Pagid makes the actual factory pad for a DB9. I mean if you have bad experience don't use them again I have zero brand loyalty after all this experience. Brembo is great. I will agree with the cold torque on the ceramic, the morning first stop can be touchy while they heat up and at high speed braking in the cold/wet the material will GRAB no problem. Brembo low metallics are great pads. If the customer doesn't mind changing brakes every 30k on the AMG's they can use metallic all day. The rotors are just expensive and so you kinda want the peace of mind of one and done brakes.

Sensors aren't in the rotor, you have one per axle in one of the two pads, it's a little metal contact that pops into a slot in the pad and once the contact is broken, the computer will send a brake thickness fault to the dashboard usually around 25% thickness.

 

On all my benz's I have always gone 2 sets of pads per 1 rotor and had no issues except for with the pagid pads (i don't know that mb still uses them the box said made in china). On my s560 I only have 18k miles and the car is rarely driven hard... shouldn't I be able to at least use a second set of pads before changing the rotor?

Also what I was talking about is actually called wear indicators (not sensors i mistyped) and there are at least two little black dots on the rotor face itself that are supposed to tell you an indication of the life. I had never even heard of this until the benz mech showed it to me. I'm glad they exist because i've not found a mechanic yet willing to measure rotors for me with a micrometer.

 

Ferrodo makes at least 6 different compounds that fit a variety of MB calipers.

 

You can do whatever you want, I generally don't do just "pad slaps" because it's produced a lot of dissapointment. You can try and come back, you'd have to buy new pads though since the rotors would transfer the texture over to new pads.. if you're really unlucky you can get caught in a cycle of pad, then rotor, then pad, and eventually you just write off Mercedes because you wanted to save a bit of cash.

The brakes for mercedes over the years have gotten really huge along with the cars and so now the cars are really hard on rotors. 18k is atypical but not completely unheard of but I've repeated this on the board for a while, the pads are hard on the rotors. If you just have some squealing you can just drive it down til it hits the sensors with no loss in braking performance. You also have to brake later/harder sometimes than you normally would with a normal car. It sounds silly but if the pads aren't used the way they should be, you get high spots on the pad which cause the vibrations which we perceive as screeching. This flattens the pad and maintains a level contact surface throughout the life of the pad.

You don't really have to measure the thickness of rotors to know if they've gone bad. Bad ones will have a telltale texture, visible shiny lip on the inside and outside of the contact patch of the pad from the rotor being worn down as you can see here.



My personal advice is to just drive it down to the sensor, try harder braking for a day to see if the noise fixes itself, and then replace the entire brake stack with quality aftermarket parts. MB brakes aren't anything special, everybody ever has made brake parts for them interchangeably over the years so it makes it more feasible to get a quality product on the aftermarket.