Brake Pads & Discs

Ibrahim5

I have bought a second hand car with full dealer service history and MOT history with no advisories ever. As it is coming up to MOT time and it has nearly done 50000 miles I checked the brake pads which have worn from 18mm to 5mm with a minimum of 3mm. I have blown £40 on a new set of brake pads. I normally change the discs every other pad change but when I check the disc it has worn from 25mm to 23.7mm with a minimum of 23mm. If I just change the pads I will keep worrying about the discs. Do I blow another £80 on two discs? If I try to get more out of the current pads and discs will an MOT tester be happy with 5mm?

MX5huggy

Brake pad minimum is 1.5mm so it will pass you might get an advisory. 

chrisw

I doubt they were 18mm when new, more like 10mm. If they're original, you should get another 20k at least out of them.

I'd personally leave it for a while, that could be 12 months off, but if you're going to keep worrying then just get the pads and discs changed at the same time for peace of mind.

Username03725

If the discs are in good shape other than having a bit of wear it sounds reasonable to just fit pads and keep an eye on them until the next pad change. 

Goudy

Change the discs as well, though you probably don't need to do it straight away.

You have 0.7mm left on the discs before they slip under the wear limit and that might seem like they are 2/3rd or so worn but as both sides of each disc wear at the same time, that's only 0.35mm of life really and it won't take long to see that worn away.

If you fit the new pads now to the old discs, you would really need to fit new pads to the new discs again when you have to change them later as it's standard practice to fit new pads with new discs due to them wearing to the contour of the old discs.

Another thing to think about is you'll be doing/paying for the job twice, sooner rather than later.
Do the job once and be done with it.

As they are all within tolerance at the moment and there is still some life left in them so you could wait a while, but for peace of mind (important with brakes) I would plan on getting them done sooner rather than later.

As for the MOT, there shouldn't be a problem but they might warning you they need looking at sometime soon.

prowla

If changing disks I would always have new pads at the same time.

Grey_Critic

Cannot answer for current models or for other makes but Ford Discs used to be imprinted with Max 22mm Min 18mm. If we needed authority for new discs then we had to measure the thivkness before we could get authorisation to replace

Flight3287462

Did you not have the same discussion with yourself a year ago?  Very strange.

diystarter7

Flight3287462 said:

Did you not have the same discussion with yourself a year ago?  Very strange.

What???...

Flight3287462

diystarter7 said:

Flight3287462 said:

Did you not have the same discussion with yourself a year ago?  Very strange.

What???...

Look and though shalt find!

cymruchris

If you're planning on keeping the car for quite a while, and you're paying labour to get the work done, I'd likely change the discs and pads together. If however you felt that you might change the car in the next year - I'd go for pads only.