Mercedes CLK in for MOT work

A 2004 Mercedes came in for some suspension investigation and a routine MOT test.

Once the car had been checked over it was apparent that it needed a fair amount of work to be carried out to get it through the MOT test.

The front brakes were binding on and unbalanced. Front or rear brakes binding on is normally the sign of either the brake pads stuck in their carriers or the brake caliper(s) starting to fail. In this instance the car require both front calipers and front brake discs and pads to be replaced.

We had to replace one of the front suspension arms - which is reasonably straight forward on this car. 

The headache and time consuming task was to replace corroded brake pipes. On some cars and particulary on Mercedes the brake pipes look like the a map of the London Underground. They bend and twist and are covered in all sorts of trims which have to be removed to access replacing them. In this case they went over the fuel tank so we had to lower the fuel tank to route the new ones correctly. It took hours to fabricate and fit all the necessary pipes. 

A little bit of technical information for you. Vehicle brake pipes are generally rigid (usually made of copper - which corrodes over time). These brake pipes transfer pressurised brake fluid from the master cylinder, where brake fluid is stored, to the brake hoses and pipes. If brake pipes are left to corrode then they can eventually burst causing the fluid to leak out which would trigger brake failure. This is the reason why they are an extremely important safety feature of the MOT test.

Mercedes brake pipes always appear to be more complex than most cars due to the amount of trims underside of the car that have to be removed to get access to them and quite often they are routed into the most difficult of places to access. 

We also had to replace the rear brake discs and pads and lubricate up the handbrake mechanism to free it off.

A time consuming job all round but the car was eventually completed and the customer was on his way.