When to replace brake pads and discs?

mrmot

Best practice is to replace the pads when the friction material gets below 3mm, the disks will likely need replacing at every other pad change. There will be minimum thickness data for the discs.

The best thing that you can do with brakes is to use the hard occasionally to keep the discs clean.

arcon5

dannyrst wrote: »

Brakes are easy to determine when they need replacing.

Do they feel different to they did a month ago, or a year ago? Are you pressing almost all the way down on the pedal to get the car to stop?

If you aren't sure, ask someone who drives another car to drive your car in an empty car park and see what they say about the brakes compared to their car.

If ops pressing all the way down to stop then that's nothing to do with pad wear, he would have other more critical problems!

---lee---

dannyrst wrote: »

Brakes are easy to determine when they need replacing.

Do they feel different to they did a month ago, or a year ago? Are you pressing almost all the way down on the pedal to get the car to stop?

If you aren't sure, ask someone who drives another car to drive your car in an empty car park and see what they say about the brakes compared to their car.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but with discs, the pads are thrown off the discs my rotational force of the disc, so they are always just off contact with the discs. Therefore, there should be no difference in braking effort until it's metal on metal. Of course the fluid will lower with brake wear which may in turn trigger the warning light.

Modern drums are self adjusting, so they won't show symptoms either.

I've got manually adjusted drums on my Landy. If they are incorrectly adjusted, you can feel more pedal travel.

Excessive pedal travel would indicate lack of fluid/air/leak - a situation that would need urgent invetigation.

arcon5

--lee--
Correct, pad wear has no affect on pedal travel.

thescouselander

cherryblossomzel wrote: »

They quoted me around £250 (or maybe it was £215, can't quite recall) for the job. This was at the dealer, though, which I wouldn't pay.


Thanks for all the advice everyone. I think I'll wait until it starts juddering/making noises/not stopping properly, or have it checked again at my next annual service (with an independent mechanic of course!)

Don't wait for anything to go wrong, especially not with the brakes. As mrmot says, replace the pads at around 3mm left - just get your garage to have a look at next service and decide what to do then.

cherryblossomzel

thescouselander wrote: »

Don't wait for anything to go wrong, especially not with the brakes. As mrmot says, replace the pads at around 3mm left - just get your garage to have a look at next service and decide what to do then.

I won't, I realise my last post was poorly worded: I'll have it checked at my next service. If things start to feel different before then, I get it looked at ASAP. In the meantime, I'm very aware of the brakes at the moment. Had to do an emergency stop the other day and it was fine, but it did get me thinking about the issue and that is why I posted the original question.