how long do brake pads last ?

Silent_Bob_3

chrisw wrote:

There is much less engine braking which is why they tend to wear faster.

I'm amazed at the low mileages people are getting, I usually get around 50,000 miles out of a set, doing the average 10000 iles a year and a mixture of motorway and town driving

Ah never thuoght of that, although mines a semi automatic so I can control engine braking on it - that would explain it though.

waster_2

kaya wrote:

vehicle/driver type make a big difference, automatics use em faster

I drive an auto 4x4 discs all round and mine are currently at 33,000+ without being changed.

GabbaGabbaHey

moonrakerz wrote:

Talking about damage - never hold your car stationary on the foot brake, use the hand brake. Holding the car on the foot brake doesn't allow the discs to cool evenly; if not, they can warp.

I think you need to be doing some pretty heavy braking before you'll get your disks hot enough to risk warping them. Perhaps on a track day (where you wouldn't use the handbrake either) or at the bottom of an alpine descent, but unlikely in normal driving.

A much better reason for not holding the car on the foot brake, especially at night, is that (especially with today's high mounted third brake light) you will dazzle anybody who is stopped behind you (e.g., at traffic lights) and destroy their night vision. Pretty anti-social.

saintscouple

I recently had my disks and pads changed, when after a couple thousand miles, had a terriable grinding sound which eased when i pressed on the brake.
What had happened is apparantly the pads need a groove down the middle to free any trapped debris, but not all pads have this groove and should be scored manually when fitted - this wasn't done on mine - but all fine now it has.

tomstickland

I think you need to be doing some pretty heavy braking before you'll get your disks hot enough to risk warping them.

You'd be surprised - do one 75-30 hard braking maneovre and the discs will be hot enough to risk warping. "Warping" is not generally the metal going out of shape, but is actually a deposit of pad material on the surface of the discs, and sitting at the lights with the footbrake on can cause this to happen.

waterbaby

Is changing brake pads and discs something I can do myself? I just did my oil and filter, and that has two spanners out of five in the Haynes manual difficulty rating, and the brake pads and discs also have a two spanner rating.

However on the back cover of Haynes there is an example page, which just happens to be the oil and filter renewal, and it has one spanner there . If the brake pads and discs are more difficult than the oil and filter, I wouldn't attempt it alone, as I don't truly understand how cars work. Even though after reading the instructions I think I could do it. It's not something I would risk getting wrong:eek:

Also, would £17 be a price for one brake pad? Presumably it is not the cost for 4?

Mikeyorks

charb wrote:

said its probably dirt. thanks for your replies

My previous Land Rovers braking degenerated quite severely after about 10 days - owing to a build up of dust around the pads. Astonishing quantity of black muck from the front wheels at each jet wash - but restored the braking to normal.

tomstickland

£17 would probably be a set of brake pads ie: 4 parts, two for each front wheel.
Changing discs and pads is pretty simple, a bit more involving than oil and filter, but well worth doing yourself.

GabbaGabbaHey

tomstickland wrote:

You'd be surprised - do one 75-30 hard braking maneovre and the discs will be hot enough to risk warping.

It depends on the car, I guess, but certainly on my cars (Porsche 911, BMW M5) there is no way that a single 75-30 braking manoeuver would get that much temperature into the disks.

tomstickland wrote:

"Warping" is not generally the metal going out of shape, but is actually a deposit of pad material on the surface of the discs, and sitting at the lights with the footbrake on can cause this to happen.

I think that you are mixing up warped disks with glazed disks.

Warped disks can indeed be caused by (a lot of) heavy braking and the metal does actually go out of shape. You can feel it as a "pulsing" in the brake pedal on light braking.

Glazed disks, on the other hand, are caused by a build-up of crud on the disks, and lead to reduced braking efficiency. This can sometimes be cured by braking hard a few times (when it is safe to do so, of course).

tomstickland

No, I'm basing what I said on a number of articles I've read on the internet by some braking guru, who claimed that in 10 years of inspecting warped discs he'd never found one that actually showed out of flatness of the material.

Porsche 911 and M5 are both engineered for high speed use and, I agree, a single 100-30 will not take it to "warping" (whatever the definition), but do a 100-30 in a Corsa and then sit at lights with the brake pedal on and that'll do it.