Changing the Rear Brake Pads: A simple job and save yourself £20

General Stuff
Things to be careful about:

1. Be careful when you jack the car. It is dangerous to climb under the car while it is held by the jack alone. At the very least, put a pile of bricks under the rubber pad near the jacking point.

2. Don't breathe any of the dust that comes from the wearing of the brake pads. It is not good for you!

3. Be very careful about testing your work before you go on the road. This is YOUR responsibility, not mine!

4. Change the pads on both wheels, front or back at the same time. They are both probably worn a similar amount anyway so you might as well do it. If you change just one set then the car may not brake evenly and then it might pull to one side when you brake which could be dangerous.

strong>General Information about the procedure:

This is a real beginner’s job, easy and you will save yourself around £20 per wheel set if you do it yourself!

I reckon that if you are new to this job it should take you no more than an hour to do the whole thing if all the nuts bolts etc work OK.

This is a list of the tools you will need:

1. A jack. This comes with the car!
2. A wheel brace.
3. A Hammer
4. A narrow punch and/or a thin screwdriver.
5. A chisel or a broad screwdriver.

This is a list of Materials you will need:
1. A set of brake pads
2. Some Heat tolerant grease (usually molybdenum based)
3. A new set of retaining pins.
4. A new cross shaped spring set. (Anti-vibration springs)

This is the work you need to do to get ready:

1. Put a brick at the front and back of two of the wheels so that the car won’t roll.

2.Remove the rubber cover from the jacking point. There are four of these, one for each wheel. In summer when the rubber is soft you can often pull it out with your fingers. If it won't come you can prize it out with a screwdriver or two.

3. Put the jack lift into the hole and wind the handle so that it starts to lift the wheel.

4. Using the wheel brace, loosen the 5 bolts which hold the wheel on. These are often on really tight, especially if it is a long time since they were last removed and doubly especially if they were put on by a mechanic in a garage who used a pneumatic doo dah. The brace that comes with the car may not be up to the job. You need one of those cross shaped braces which you can jump up and down on! As a last resort you may have to take it to a garage to get them loosened.

5. When they are loose, jack the wheel right off the ground. Put a pile of bricks under the rubber jacking pad.

6. Continue to remove the wheel.

How you Change the Pads

When you are sure that the car is stable, release the hand brake.

Next you have to punch the little retaining pins out. You can see one of them half removed in the picture. Get your punch (or a thin screwdriver will do if you don’t mind damaging the end) and put it over the hole where the pin pokes through. Bash it with a hammer and you will see that it starts to push out of place. Once it starts it will be quite loose.

When the first one is out, the cross shaped spring will be loose and it can be removed.

Finally, knock the second pin out in the same way as the first one.

You can now remove the brake pads. Sometimes there is a lip on the edge of the brake disk caused by years of wear and this often stops you getting the pads straight out. So get your broad screwdriver and use it as a lever to force the pads away from the disk until the pads have enough clearance to get them out. The brake pistons are pushed back into their cylinders in this process.

If you are lucky you can now pull them out with your fingers but you may need to lever them out by hooking your broad screwdriver into the slots in the brake pads.

Once they are out, take a look at them. The pad is made of a fibrous material which is glued onto a steel backing plate. If the brake pad material is less than 2 millimetres in thickness then the pads definitely need replacing.

The new pads will be a whole lot thicker so you will have to prise the brake cylinders even further away from the disk. When the gap is big enough, put the new pads in place but before you do this you should put some heat resistant grease on the edges of the steel backing plate; not too much and don’t get it on the brake surfaces themselves for obvious reasons!

At this point you are ready to replace the retaining pins and the cross shaped spring. Actually you are supposed to replace these each time you change the brake pads.

Push the first pin into place, making sure it engages in the slots in the brake pads. You will need a hammer to engage the pin the last few millimetres because there is a spring on the end of the pin which has to clip into place to retain it.

Put the cross shaped spring into place and then retain it by fitting the second retaining pin.

Once this is done you can replace the wheel and start on the other side!

Job done!

Before you go on the road, check that the brakes work OK!



Rear Off-side Brake Caliper


Pad Retainers and Cross Spring

Aircon part 2

I took my car to the aircon firm. They just recharged the system and off it went. Cool at last.

The cost of a refill was £123.38. I hope it lasts me a long time!

Spaceship 1

Cost of Ownership

Here is a listing of all the expenses that I have incurred since I had this car. looking back, it seems like a lot of dosh! I reckon I have spent more on this car than on any of my previous cars. I am rewarded by the fact that it is a comfortable drive though. Also it was incredibly cheap to buy and it is fully depreciated. There is no loss of asset therefore! Also I make no monthly payments (with interest) to any loan shark! So all in all I think it's not costing me too much. What does anyone else think?

16/03/2000 Mercedes Immobiliser -115.00
07/04/2000 Merc Touch up Paint -7.47
16/04/2000 Merc leather polish -1.99
22/04/2000 Haynes Manual Merc -9.99
22/04/2000 Spare Mercedes key -10.61
26/05/2000 excess for new windscreen Mercedes -50.00
26/05/2000 Merc Spray paint -12.06
14/06/2000 Mercedes spark plugs -8.99
22/07/2000 Mercedes fire extinguisher and warning triangle 22.98
30/08/2000 Mercedes T cut -6.49
02/09/2000 Merc oil filter -5.79
08/09/2000 Merc sump plug and throttle grommet -1.37
29/12/2000 Mercedes 2 rear tyres -104.00
29/12/2000 Mercedes screen wash -3.99
TOTAL 01/01/2000 - 31/12/2000 -360.73
------------

07/01/2001 Mercedes Rear brake discs and pads -49.35
14/01/2001 Mercedes fog lamp bulb -8.99
22/02/2001 Front Pads -45.83
25/05/2001 Merc new engine fan -233.08
03/06/2001 Mercedes underseal -2.99
28/06/2001 Merc Aircon Refurbishment -796.36
08/07/2001 Mercedes oil -21.99
16/09/2001 Body filler mercedes -8.98
TOTAL 01/01/2001 - 31/12/2001 -1167.57


19/01/2002 Mercedes Oil Filter -5.5
01/02/2002 Exhaust Manifold and Gasket Set Mercedes -267.96
01/02/2002 Mercedes manifold bolts and studs -9.94
09/02/2002 Lubricants Mercedes -17.24
13/02/2002 Mercedes manifold fitting -79.31
15/02/2002 Mercedes Rear Exhaust Section -120.00
17/02/2002 Mercedes wiper blades -22.48
17/02/2002 Mercedes NSR tyre -61.5
02/03/2002 Mercedes 2 front tyres -136.95
07/03/2002 Mercedes balljoint and MOT -89.7
22/03/2002 Mercedes Tow Bar -156.27
12/04/2002 Lubricants Mercedes 1l Transmission Fluid -8.45
22/06/2002 Mercedes wheel arches and dent -312.43
02/08/2002 fan belt Mercedes -22.45
11/08/2002 Mercedes 1 rear tyres -65.00
08/09/2002 spark plugs mercedes -9.49
TOTAL 01/01/2002 - 31/12/2002 -1384.67
------------

18/01/2003 Headlamp lens mercedes -35.07
05/04/2003 mercedes engine oil halfords with 1l free -12.99
05/04/2003 mercedes engine oil halfords with 1l free -12.99
05/04/2003 Mercedes Oil Filter -5.5
05/04/2003 mercedes exhaust bkt+kit oil filter plugs -34.24
17/04/2003 Mercedes Front discs and brake pads -246.65
06/06/2003 Battery and Alternator -466.71
11/07/2003 Mercedes NSR tyre +exhaust front -181.5
25/10/2003 Mercedes Oil -7.99
03/11/2003 Oil Mercedes -14.99
06/12/2003 Antifreeze Mercedes -11.99
TOTAL 01/01/2003 - 31/12/2003 -1030.62
------------

01/01/2004 Mercedes Oil -8.99
28/02/2004 Mercedes rear offside tyre -52.86
09/04/2004 Mercedes Oil -7.99
16/04/2004 Mercedes oil -7.49
01/05/2004 oil mercedes and fiesta -29.98
01/05/2004 Mercedes and FiestaOil Filters -8.74
02/05/2004 spark plugs mercedes -9.99
21/05/2004 Rear brake pads and air filter mercedes -39.36
23/05/2004 Mercedes Rust treatment and meths -6.98
28/05/2004 Rear Brake Caliper LHRear Mercedes -105.16
28/05/2004 Rear Brake Caliper RHRear Mercedes -105.16
28/05/2004 1L brake fluid mercedes -4.69
30/05/2004 Brake Bleeding Kit Mercedes -3.49
TOTAL 01/01/2004 - 30/06/2004 -390.88



------------
OVERALL TOTAL -4334.47

Air

I went along to my local air conditioning expert on Friday. The system has not been working since some point in the winter.

I could have done with it recently because we have been having really hot weather. I know we are in the spring/early summer period, nevertheless, we have had no rain for about a month, and we have had temperatures in the thirties. That is unusual in the South East of England but if last year is anything to go by, it is becoming the norm. The grass is dying off and I have to keep a sprinkler going in the garden.


Part of Our Garden Last Summer

I just looked back at my service record and I see that I had my aircon completely refurbished on 28th June 2001. On that occasion I had it brought up to the new EEC standard for eco-friendly refrigerant. That meant that I had to have new pipes, seals and various parts. You can’t just re gas the system with the new fluid because the old seals won’t take it. So the total cost was £796.36!! Not cheap.

I hope it’ll be cheaper this time round. I suppose there is some leak somewhere that will need fixing…..anyway we will see.

I’ve had a few problems with cooling and aircon over the last few years, but more about that at some other time.

Editorial Note: The Opposite of Paranoia

I have not set a web counter on this Blog yet because most of them seem to come with strings attached. One day I might stick one in! Being early days I don't suppose there are many visitors to this site.....but there seem to be ways of getting meshed into the web. This is one of those ways.....getting yourself listed on the Blogwise site. Let's see if it works! (Takes 11 days apparently....need to be positively vetted, and the distance between my eyes needs measuring!)

More Rust!

Here is another irritating place for corrosion to begin! This is the lower rear corner of the rear doors. There seems to be a split in the rubber here and over time I guess it lets water in, and of course the rubber will then retain it with all the salts and various electrolytes.....lovely.


Urgh!

This one is a real pain because to do the job properly you would need to remove the door furniture. You take this to your average bodywork specialist and he'll look at you as if you came in on his shoe!

Well, the simplest thing to do is to use a touch up paint here and do it yourself. Make sure you get the area clean, and treat it with rust remover.

Two coats of primer; one coat of touch up paint and a final coat of laquer if you have a metallic finish.

Don't expect a perfect job though...unless you are very clever at this sort of thing. Also, make sure you get under the rubber with the new paint.

It'll last two or three years and then you will have to do it again!

Rust!

I wonder what's going on here?


All is revealed: Heck!

For its age it is a pretty tidy car but of course it is not perfect and it does have a few 'little' bodywork problems here and there (just like me). After all it is 17 years old and it has spent its life in the Great British Climate and it has been driven on the winter roads, which means plenty of nice corrosive Salt. Considering all that, it is not too bad really!

Over the last couple of weekends I have been tidying a few rust spots on my car. Today I got to the rear wheel arch on the driver's side. Well, this one is a bit of a mess. I actually had a bodywork specialist have a look at it a couple Of years ago (22nd June 2002 to be precise; cost was £312.43). I got him to tidy up both of the rear wheel aches as well as a couple of other jobs. I was a bit suspicious of his technique but the work looked ok from the outside. The job did not last though and I am faced with getting it done all one again. Hopefully, that will actually be possible!
Anyway, I removed the plastic trim from the leading edge of the arch where a few bubbles Of rust were beginning to show though once more. The job is actually worse than I thought and here are a couple of photographs.

I may need to seek out a decent bodywork Specialist soon and see if anything can be done. I don’t think I’ll take it back to the same place again. I think he was good at making ‘specials’ but maybe not so good at careful repair work.

I suppose that it will be the sort of problem that will ultimately kill off this car though.

A Coruna and a broken cable

Way back in 2002 we drove our car all the way to A Corruna in Spain. It was a great journey and the car was perfect for such a trip.
It was an epic journey with just one overnight stop along the way. That was in the middle of France
At this point l had a slight shock because at one point the accelerator pedal went completely slack and stopped working. For a moment there I thought we were in big trouble, but actually it was dead easy to solve. All that happened was that the little clip thing that joins the cable to the works had broken. It was easily fixed by clamping the cable between a nut and a bolt. It worked fine for the rest of the journey and I was able to do the job once I got back to the UK; no problem!

We had a great time in Spain and we came home on the boat from Bilbao to Portsmouth.

That crossing takes 24 hours so it is a bit of a break in its own right. Because of the length of the crossing you have to have a cabin, no option, but for my family, that was part of the experience

This is the star on the front of my car.

Star

Interstitial Comment

Whew! Cor Blimey mate! What a heat wave. Well into the 30's yesterday and my aircon has packed up.

Something else to deal with soooon!

Bleeding Brakes! How to do it!

Things to be careful about:

1. Be careful when you jack the car. It is dangerous to climb under the car while it is held by the jack alone. At the very least, put a pile of bricks under the rubber pad near the jacking point.

2. Don't get the brake fluid in your mouth because it is poisonous.

3. Don't get it on the paintwork of your car. It will damage it.

4. Be very careful about testing your work before you go on the road. This is YOUR responsibility, not mine!

General Information about the procedure:

I reckon that if you are new to this job it should easily take you no more than a couple of hours to do the whole thing if all the nuts bolts etc work OK.

According to the manual I read, you have to bleed the brakes in the following order, which is in a sequence which starts with the furthest wheel from the master cylinder:

Offside Rear
Nearside Rear
Offside Front
Nearside Front

Of course you do not have to bleed all the wheels if you have worked on only one wheel and you have not allowed air to get right up into the whole system.

This is a listing of the tools you will need:

1. A ring spanner that fits over the bleed nipples
2. A brake bleeding kit with a non return valve: the one I just bought cost £3.49.
3. Something to catch the old fluid, such as a jam jar.
4. A helper. Optional, but saves a lot of time!
5. A jack. This comes with the car!
6. A wheel brace.

And here is a list of the materiels you need:

1. Some brake fluid. The type you want is DOT4, which is a specification for brake fluid. This usually comes in half litre or 1 litre sizes. I just bought a litre costing £4.69. It's always best to use brand new fluid from a container that has not been opened because it absorbs moisture and goes off after a while. It is cheap and it is a real pain to have to stop and get some more!

This is the work you need to do to get ready:

1. Put a brick at the front and back of two of the wheels so that the car wont roll.

2.Remove the rubber cover from the jacking point. There are four of these, one for each wheel. In summer when the rubber is soft you can often pull it out with your fingers. If it won't come you can prize it out with a screwdriver or two.

3. Put the jack lift into the hole and wind the handle so that it starts to lift the wheel.

4. Using the wheel brace, loosen the 5 bolts which hold the wheel on. These are often on really tight, especially if it is a long time since they were last removed and doubly especially if they were put on by a mechanic in a garage who used a pneumatic doo dah. The brace that comes with the car may not be up to the job. You need one of those cross shaped braces which you can jump up and down on! As a last resort you may have to take it to a garage to get them loosened.

5. When they are loose, jack the wheel right off the ground. Put a pile of bricks under the rubber jacking pad.

6. Continue to remove the wheel.

7. Push the ring spanner onto the bleed nipple followed by the tube.

8. Loosen the nipple about 1 turn.

9. Open the lid of the brake fluid reservoir. It looks like this:


Brake Fluid Reservoir: Note the small reservoir at the left hand side of the photograph.

How you BLEED THE BRAKES (Finally)

Something to be careful about:

When you bleed the brakes, you are replacing the fluid and possibly air in the system. It is replaced by the fluid in the narrow rear reservoir indicated in the picture. As you do this you can very quickly empty this small chamber. Because the fluid is thick and viscous, it will only refill v e r y slowly from the larger front chamber. If you don't give it time to refil, you will get air into the Master Cylinder. You may then have to repeat the procedure on all four wheels, which is a bit of a pain to say the least!

This is where your helper comes in; It's not easy for you to see the reservoir and the wheel and sit in the driver's seat at the same time, unless you have a cunning series of mirrors!! Make sure your helper keeps the front chamber filled with fluid and get him/her to call out to you when the small chamber is full enough and it is OK for you to continue.

10.Sit in the driver's seat and slowly pump the brake pedal. Fluid will be magically drawn into the master cylinder. Pause for a few seconds between pumps to allow fluid to transfer into the little reservoir. Get your helper to keep the reservoir topped up.

11. After a short while you will see air and fluid pump out of the plastic pipe joined to the brake nipple. Keep pumping until all the air is gone and only fluid comes out continuously. When you have reached this point, reached this point tighten the nipple and that wheel is done.

12. Replace the wheel. Do it up as tight as you can while the wheel is raised, then lower the jack until the wheel is grounded. Then do it up TIGHT!

13. If you have to, repeat the procedure for all of the wheels.

14. You know that the brakes are OK if the brake pedal won't push right down to the floor. it should 'bite' before that! If it is bit spongey the chances are that you have some air still in the system somewhere. Have a beer and start again!!

15. Make sure you test the brakes while you are in a safe place....(like on your driveway) before you try them out at slow speed on the road! Be Careful!

Continental Driving

In the few short years that I've had this car I have taken it abroad a number of times. I have driven through France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg. There may be a few others, but I can't remember them right now.

For me the best thing about the driving has been the Aircon. This is the first motor I've owned with Aircon and it has been a lifesaver, especially in the middle of Spain where it is almost like a desert in places.

The next best thing is the comfort. I counted the number of controls on my seat. There are nine! Most of them are motorised.

During all the miles I have done abroad I have only had one problem. When I was in Belgium last year my alternator packed up. I had holiday insurance luckily!

Bleeding Brakes! Why do you need to do it?

Sometimes, for one reason or another, air gets into the cylinder or the pipework. I guess this is most common when some sort of maintenance has been done. It has to be the sort of job that causes brake fluid to be spilled.

When air gets in the system the hydraulic system won't work so good, or maybe it won't work at all.

When you press down on the brake pedal, it feels soft and easy to push. That is because the air just gets squashed up instead of the brake pads being pushed against the disks. You have to refill the system and make sure that all of the air has gone out of the system.The brakes will work fine again after that (usually!)

Petrol goes up, Petrol goes down

Oh Well, here we go again.

The last time the price of petrol got to this level we nearly had a national strike! I just filled the car and it cost me over £50 to do it. It is 82p a litre right now and all indications are that it will rise some more.

I suppose we have to blame the 3 B's; Blair Bush and Bin Laden!

Bleeding Brakes! How they work.

I had a reason to bleed my brakes on Sunday, a task which is easy....if you know how. However as with many things, there is a knack and for the mechanically challenged (but strangely willing to try) this is it in easy bite sized bits:

FIrst of all, how do brakes work? Well, the braking system on a car works by hydraulics. This means when you press the brake pedal the movement of the pedal is linked by a lever to a piston just behind the bukhead of the driver's footwell. (This is called the master cylinder.)

This piston is linked to a series of pipes which connect to another cylinder at the braking system on each wheel of your car. The force applied by your foot on the pedal is transferred through some liquid in some pipes to the braking system at the wheels. At each wheel the other piston moves in relation to the the 'master cylinder'.

The clever part is this: The master cylinder is narrower than the slave cylinders and this means that the force applied at the master cylinder is magically magnified at the slave cylinders so that your poor weak leg muscle is able to make a superman sized force on the brakes. Enough to make the car stop. Without this 'Hydraulic Advantage' you would not be strong enough to stop the car.

Here is a great article about the workings of car braking systems:

Mileometer on Sunday

I'm only just getting the knack with this bogging stuff. I meant to publish this on Sunday; the first mileometer update. I'll review this from time to time!

Hello Car!

This is my car soon after I bought it on 170 odd thousand miles.

I spent a lot of time deciding what to buy. When I was looking around I was surprised at how expensive cars are these days. Really to get a two year old family car with a bit of oomph it looked like I was going to have to spend say..... £12000. Thats not the sort of money I would readily spend (bit of a skinflint!)

I knew someone who had an old Mercedes and he convinced me that it was a good idea to buy an old Merc. You can get these for say £3 to 4K. I guess they are not too popular because of the relatively high petrol consumption....but there are many good points which I will come to at some point.