Hello to All,
Last year while on a driving event in the mountains with the local MBCA chapter, I experienced a case of "caliper lock-up". Entering a turn aggressively I hit brakes firmly to maintain control, but the inside rear wheel locked up and I found myself in a scary little drift toward the roadside gully. At the time I attributed it to the wet road surface. That wheel was logically carrying the lightest load because of weight shift during the inertia of the turn.
Only recently when I noticed that I could no longer roll the car back out of the garage easily, did it dawn on me that the right rear caliper was not releasing completely. Many of us who have been messing around with cars since our teens know that after many years of use ( or , more correctly in my case, non-use ) a brake piston will eventually begin to corrode in the bore area behind the seal.
After pulling the wheel I noticed severe dis-coloration on the rotor and there were some small shards of metal imbedded into the leading edge of the inside brake pad. Investigating this further, I realized that the spring that anchors the emergency brake shoe to the backing plate had somehow failed, then migrated out of the drum area and gotten lodged in next to the rotor. The additional drag from the fouled pad and the heat build-up from the extra friction served to make a BAD situation worse.
Now on to the FIX: Since the shoe set was out of position inside the drum it took more than a few whacks of the dead-blow hammer and the longest prybar I own to dislodge the rotor/drum. The local MB dealer is getting me the retention springs, while the rotors and calipers are quickly and easily available over the web. The fix is underway.
Hope this never happens to any of you - - Comments?
Regards, Larry in CA
