Norton,
Poor Merrill.
First, if you are going to insult me, do if off line. If you don't like me, or my car, or how I took it from then to now, either tell me off line, share it here, or hold your peace. Ditto if you don't appreciate my contributions to the forum(s), or the knowledge I've gained on this car. You've already insulted John Olsen in previous posts which was unprofessional and uncalled for. Your little digs here are unwelcome, and frankly, childish. We all understand that you only have respect for those with grease under their fingernails. But that shows a very narrow view of the world. I am not the only one in our group to have utilized the services of professionals in achieving our goals in the maintenance, running and restoration of our cars. To denigrate those who pay for professional service while elevating those that do it themselves is insulting to all of us. You also seem to be pre-occupied with finding fault in my posts. That's not the purpose of our forum.
That being said:
This thread started about rebuilding brake calipers, and part of that digressed into sleeving our brake calipers. The firm most often associated with brake sleeving for Mercedes is White Post Restorations, mainly due to their regular advertising in The Star. If one were to limit their knowledge of brakes to Mercedes only, one would think that White Post is the only firm offering this service. Not so. There are others, as I previously pointed out. That's knowledge that I share. Limiting yourself to one vendor can be a mistake. White Post does not have a spotless record, as others have indicated. My restorer wouldn't use them.
Now, we know that getting a rebuilt ATE is pretty inexpensive. I shared how I got that done. You shared a new vendor. We can all agree that $65.00 is a reasonable price. The question became, why would you sleeve a brake caliper? This is a good question, and if you are new to this forum or car, and you have a seized old brake caliper in your hand, the ensuing dialog can be worthwhile.
Since I considered sleeving, but rejected it some years ago, the topic interested me. I went out to the internet for different car clubs, forums and vendors and drew my conclusions from what I read. You don't need to agree with them. One of the topics that came up had to do with Corvette brakes. That led to other forums where I discovered that many people share the opinion that there is an inherent problem with fixed caliper Corvette Brakes of 1965-1982. That problem is what led the Corvette owners to use sleeving, and which is why you indicated that there are thousands of Vettes out there with sleeved calipers. Am I wrong in concluding that the sleeving was done to correct a problem? That's what I read over and over again regarding Corvette brakes. To argue the point is senseless. It's not my opinion, its a fact, so get over it for Pete's sake.
In continuing to research this, I came across many different opinions, and formed my own conclusions. You don't have to agree.
1) Sleeving OUR ATE brakes is nearly 3 times the price of a rebuilt; at the time I had mine done, it was more then that.
2) Some suggest, and I agree, that sleeving is best done when you can't get rebuilt calipers.
3) The life of most of our brakes is more related to maintenance then anything else, so if you maintain your brakes properly you can get a very long life out of our calipers, as Vince showed us. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. Of course we have stuck and leaking calipers! I had them from my 280SL that sat unused for 13 years! That doesn't make the design flawed, and it doesn't suggest sleeving.
Norton, if you think old Corvette brakes are fine--great. When you buy an old Vette, don't sleeve the brakes. If you think there is something inherently wrong with our brakes, that's OK too. Spend the money and sleeve them.
As for the information I posted that I didn't credit, sorry to have offended you. I could have, perhaps should have, put a link there, but since Rodd asked the question it seemed to me to be good information that I simply extracted.
Michael Salemi
1969 280SL
Signal Red w/Black Leather
Restored
