I cannot imagine any circumstances whereby your rears would wear out before your fronts,So if you haven't replaced the fronts yet,I doubt the sound you hear is because they are shot.It's more likely that the friction surfaces have become glazed and are causing squealing.
Moreover,although I don't have an ML,I'm pretty sure they will have wear sensors on each wheel which would kick-in way before the friction material was worn away.
I have 17,000 on my brake pads and they've started to squeek at about 3,000 miles. But only when the weather get hot. Strange, but my service advisor says to is not uncommon for it to happen.
Best thing to do is pull your wheels off and examine the pads yourself to make sure the pads are not worn out.
Hmmm, rears wearing before the fronts is rather strange. Another possibility is that some road contamination or dust got on the pad surfaces and is causing the noise.
All that the original poster has said is that he's hearing squeaking from the rear brakes. Unless he's actually measured the pad thickness, it may be premature to assume that there's excessive wear.
I've had cars and motorcycles that were bad about squealing the rear brakes, even though there was no excessive wear and braking performance wasn't compromised.
I'd take the pads out, check to see if there's excessive wear or pad glazing. If the problem persists, I'd change to a different pad compound for the rear brakes.
I had some noise from only one side of the rear. Some anti-squeal compound solved that problem. As others have suggested, disassemble it and have a look. It might turn out to be an easy fix.
A few years ago I had a 320E 1993, had the same sqealing problem. Changed the pads, no change, changed the pads for different brand, no change. Had the rotors skimmed by machining, new pads again, no change ???????
The answer was have to have the rotors radially ground, then fit textar pads, then after over 30,000 miles no sound just brilliant braking. Sold the car after that.
Found out later that to achieve the maximum braking performance all rotors on Benz cars should be radially ground not machined. This prevents the LP record effect, one continuous track when played with a disc pad causes squealing everytime.
Cheers to all from Australia.
__________________
Ben A VanderVeldt
1998 AMG C43 GreenBlack
1998 C280 Elegance GreenBlack
1993 E320 Dark Grey Metallic
1973 250 S2 Maple Yellow
Australia
The post on grinding instead of machining sounds quite likey to me. Now how hard is to find a place that grinds rather than machines?
Doug
For your 126 the question is moot – after two pad changes you should install new rotors, it will cost less then having them machined. As noted correctly above if you use Textar pads and paste there will be no noise.
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