How long do your brake pads last?
 

Greetings,
Last August I replaced my front brake pads with ones I got at the dealer (I don't know what kind they are but I paid something like $50 for them). This past weekend, the brake pad wear sensor light came on. I don't really know how many miles it has been since I replaced those pads, but I can't imagine it's been a lot more than 20,000 miles. Is it very strange that my front pads would wear this quickly? When the light came on, I just automatically assumed it was some electrical problem because I thought brake pads usually last more than a year.

How long do your brake pads last (both front and rear)?

Thanks for volunteering the info.

Alex

I have a 77 240d and it goes through front brake pads pretty fast. I think that once I noted that they had only lasted about 10,000 miles. The rear ones seem to last forever though.

Luckily, brake pads are cheap. I tried a set of hard ones (not MB parts) once in order to get longer life out of them.

Those probably would have lasted forever but were noisy and did not seem to stop the car as well. Took them off after a week or two and bought MB parts from a local discounter.

Depends on many factors like driving style (hard braking, lots of stop and go driving, hills/mountains, etc.), what the pads are made of (several formulations), condition of the braking system, etc. About 80% of your braking power is on the front brakes because of the laws of physics that apply to braking (step on brakes and watch your front end dive/lower - on motorcycles really good drivers can make a the bike stand on the front tire when braking hard and the rear tire will be completely off the road and pros can get the rear tire as much as 1 foot off the road - same laws of physics for brakes apply similarly to both cars and motorcycles as well as other vehicles) and about 20% on the rear brakes (if only the rear brakes are used then the tires will lock up under hard braking and skid - vehicle takes a much longer distance to stop). So front brake pads wear much faster than rear pads anyway - how fast depends on how you drive, where you drive, and how hard you brake.

Tom

20k miles sounds way more than reasonable to me for front pads on a w123. I would expect 10k miles. At 20k miles I would considered changing the rotors too and checking/packing the wheel bearings.

Speaking of brake pads, say you have a 560SL 1987 or so, what kind of pads and rotors would you put on if you were to go 140mph, then back down to 75mph without warping the rotors or glazing them. =)

Thanks,

Austin

About 15K for the fronts. 30K for the rears. W126.

I get 6-8 months or about 10K miles out of my front pads. The best I ever got was about 15K.

The rear pads last at least 20K.

I'm impress by the short life your brake pads last.
Sure it depends of many factors but on my 240D W123, the front pads last about 75k miles and the rear pads last 125k miles.
This a an other advantage of the manual tranny : the engine brake which is more important than on a automatic tranny ;)

Not a diesel, but
 

I got 30,000 miles on my 190e, but its a lighter car. It is a standard trans but I typically don't use engine braking, I've found its easier to change brake pads than clutches. I think a lot of the wear is in overcomming the torque converter.

Ok, so it sounds to me like it's not abnormal that I have to change my pads after about 20K miles. I also do very local stop and go driving (a lot of it in the city) so I guess I should feel lucky that they lasted so long.

How much warning does that brake pad wear indicator give you? Does it leave you a few hundred miles before you absolutely have to change the pads? Thanks

Alex

Yes you can still use them for a few hundred miles but if I can give you an advice, do that quickly because if you wait too long you will have to change also the discs !

How long do the discs last? Mine seem to be wearing, might need to change them next time.

How long do the discs last?
 

I have no idea. Mine are still original in good condition after 157k miles.
It's exactly like the pads, it depends of your driving style and if you do a lot of stop and go.

Dieselhead, judging the way you high-tailed it out of the diesel meeting, I would guess 20k on a set of pads is more than ample...

Needless to say, no one was impressed. Next time, think before you spin out on gravel, you wouldn't want to hit our pretty cars with rocks.

Yeah, sorry about that. I guess that driving a car as slow as mine, I forgot that diesels, on a very very good day, can spin in gravel. Trust me, I don't drive that fast. 70 on I-287 seems pretty reasonable to me.

Alex

While we're at it, anyone care to mention which of the Fastlane pad brands are best? Pagid, Texstar, etc??
Thanks