Brake pad wear

I am currently at 42000 miles and still on same pirelli scorpion tyres and same brakes, however i notice when i am towing i get alot more brake dust on the rears, i put that down to having more weight towards the rear, also the last time i had a boat on a trailer, a full length roof box, two bikes on the roof and three teenagers in the back.

I think mine will need to be replaced at the 48k service. So far very happy with its performance, brakes as philskill says are one of the cars strong points

(31-05-2013 05:11pm)PhilSkill Wrote:  From Honest John... Although I'm not totally sure this is your issue...

This must be the 1,000th time I've had to repeat this information. Brake discs corrode all the time the vehicle is left standing, particularly in rain or when condensation is heavy. It's worst in the winter. About 95 per cent of a car's braking is done through the front – the rears only come into play to provide balance during heavy braking. Every morning, braking cleans the night's surface corrosion from the front discs but little or none from the rear. Corrosion gradually eats into the rear discs and they become grooved, leading to heavy wear of the pads.

Done 2 sets of rears on My Volvo C30 to 1 set of fronts by 60000 miles, heavy daily driving.

What a load of crap!!!. The rear pads will clean any surface corrosion the same as the fronts do on the first application of the brakes or we would all be driving round with orange rust coloured rear disks.
I suspect that the high wear rate of the rear pads is due to the disks being quite small (front and rear) for a 1700kg car, thus they have to work harder. Most of my previous cars (coupes) i have got 40000+ from the fronts and never had to change the rears and they all had much larger disks

Electronic Brake Force distribution will often cause more brake pressure to be applied to the rear than the front leading to greater brakepad wear on the rear than the front.

(06-06-2013 08:24am)speary Wrote:  What a load of crap!!!. The rear pads will clean any surface corrosion the same as the fronts do on the first application of the brakes or we would all be driving round with orange rust coloured rear disks.
I suspect that the high wear rate of the rear pads is due to the disks being quite small (front and rear) for a 1700kg car, thus they have to work harder. Most of my previous cars (coupes) i have got 40000+ from the fronts and never had to change the rears and they all had much larger disks

Although I don't believe this is the cause on new Evoques, it's not complete crap, this is definitely a factor generally, Take my Mazda, the Rear Discs and Calipers have all had to be replaced due to corrosion over the last 8 years, the fronts have never been changed, the BMW Mini we had also had its rear discs replaced, The rears are much more exposed to the salt and wet thrown up by the car and do a lot less work than the fronts.

A factor seems to be because the Mazda (like many 8 year old cars) has only Differential stability control not Braking Stability control, and so it conventionally wears the fronts out faster than the rears as they do nearly all the work and this can be seen in the Brake dust on the wheels, the rears are usually covered in Mud the Fronts in Brake dust.

Also likely with 4WD and hill start features the rear brakes do more of the work than a conventional FWD, these 3 factors are likely to be having an effect on rear brake wear.

The amont of work done by the brakes is effectively the same irrespective of the size of brakes, larger brakes are more efficient as they have a larger braking surface and can dispel heat better so will give more effective braking but the energy released through the brakes is basically the same, so for the given pad material and surface area of the pad the wear will be much the same. Bigger brakes would generally show lower wear because the surface area of the pad is larger.

Just had my 2012 Evoque serviced (14,500 miles). The Health Check Sheet they give you indicates that my rear brake pads are wearing heavily and more than the fronts. Cost of replacing rear pads at £250

had my 2nd service done at my supplying dealer last week at 32000 miles and rear pads needed replacing,down to 2mm.
cost me a total of £467 (£292 service and £175 rear pads) thought that was excellent considering some of the prices I have read on this forum ie. £400 for service alone.
still have 2.5mm tread on my worst tyre which are the original continentals, rears are still 4.5mm