Normal Brake pad wear time in hilly areas?

Hello,
I have a question for you about brake wear. I just had my rear brake
pads replaced on 7/24/04. I live in San Francisco and it's very hilly
here. I just had another servicing done on the car and I'm told the
brake pads are now 80%. (This is on 10/2/04 a little over 2 months
later.) Does this sound right that 20% of the brake pad has worn away
in such a short amount of time? (It's a 1992 Honda civic SI.) I
don't drive heavy on the breaks and probably only go on a hill like
once a week.

Thanks,
Chet

 

Time elapsed is meaningless. Miles is what counts. How many miles between
the pads being replaced and the shop saying they are down to 80%?

By don't drive heavy on the brakes, do you also mean you don't "ride the
brakes"? Maybe the calipers aren't adjusted properly. Was it down to 80%
on both inner and outer pads? Or just 1 or the other? If inner and outer
are wearing differently it's possible your caliper slides are sticking.

 

"Does this sound right that 20% of the brake pad has worn away

Pads or shoes?
Shoes will wear much faster than normal when first seating in since there
are slight differences in radii between the shoes & drums. After that, the
apparent wear will decrease.
I wouldn't be suprised if pads did something similar.
I wouldn't get too concerned yet. Just note the % wear next time they're
checked to see if the high rate continues or not.

 

The estimate of percentage is very, very rough while they're still
working, I've had percentages go down and *up* for a year or more.
Just keep your eye on it at every checkup.

J.

 

i lived in sf until earlier this year, and had over 50k on the original
pads. and i lived at the top of nob hill, so i had to deal with [steep]
hills all the time.

basically, pads last a good long time. and they have audible wear
indicators for the real hard core misers out there that will only change
at the last possible second. dealers otoh, especially sf honda, are
just bandits. get a second opinion from an independent, or better yet,
inspect the pads yourself.

 

Oh no more than 4000 miles elapsed on the brake job since this latest
service check. The readings from the dealer on the report shows 8mm
left front remaining, 8mm right front remaining. I believe they are
referring to the pads. I gather the pads start out at 10mm. And I
definitely don't ride the brakes.

When I asked about 20% of the brakes depth disappearing in 2 months
the service rep said "oh this city tears up brakes and tires" because
my tires are 50% worn down in the 24,000 miles I've driven on them. I
guess that's probably reasonable but the brakes wearing down 10% a
month doesn't make sense to me.

It makes even less sense since the brakes weren't wearing down that
quickly in the year and a half that I've lived here (prior to the
brake job) since at 10% a month I would have gone through almost two
sets of brake pads and I haven't done that. If the trend continues at
10% a month I'll have to check with the dealer again for something
being wrong with their brake job.

Thanks,
Chet

 

4000 is does sound like a short period to be 20% down. But you list left
and right. There are 4 pads. Left inner and outer, right inner and outer.
Is what you listed apply for all 4? Or just the outers on each side?

Once again, ignore time, it's mileage. Maybe someone else will chime in
here and say that pads wear more or less in the early or late part of their
life and that half of a 2 month sample is not what they are going to do
every month for life.

But were you checking every 2 months before? Part of me says maybe they do
wear quicker in the early stages cause they are thicker and maybe get a
little more pressure, but I don't really know.

Also, they may just be cheap pads. My first time changing brakes on my
Accord I used pads from AutoZone. Those performed very poorly and squeaked
like mad. I threw them out in under 5000 miles and replaced them with the
Gold line from CarQuest.

 

It's driving habits. If the wear is unusual, is it unusual for the car to be
driven in a hilly area? Has the car been driving in the city (more stops, so
more braking) as opposed to on the highway? Has the driver of the car changed to
someone who rides the brakes on the hills?

In theory, one can drive from California to Florida and use the brakes once.

On the other hand, one can drive a mile in the city and use the brakes several
times.

I can believe the pads wore at 10% a month with frequent San Francisco downtown
driving.

 

Caroline wrote:

i can't. some of the dealers in that town [sf honda] are absolute
bandits. a friend of mine took his car in for service at 15k miles &
they called him at work with a horror story about how his pads were down
the the metal and how the vehicle was too dangerous to drive until
fixed. so he gave them the go-ahead.

unfortunately i was out of town at the time, so couldn't tell my friend
that when i'd had his car to fix a busted door mirror, i'd rotated the
tires & checked the pads. there was more than 80% present only 2 weeks
before sf honda's little game.

like i said, i had 50k of sf driving on my car, original pads, and that
/included/ regularly doing the lombard st tourist thing when i had
friends in from out of town.

unless the o.p. does 100 miles a night with a dominos pizza delivery
job, 10% is something of a stretch.

 

Fair enough.

I'll just throw in that the original pads on my 1991 Civic lasted only 43k miles
and 1.75 years. Maybe two weeks of this was spent driving in mountainous areas.
The rest of the driving was in very flat areas.

Depends on driving habits.

To the previous list, add: Is it a manual transmission where the driver often
uses the engine to brake?

I do agree that plenty of shops (dealer and otherwise) are into ripping off
customers for brake pads. Checking brake pad thickness is not difficult, even
for someone who has minimal mechanical experience. At the least, stick around
the shop who's checking the pads and make the technician show you the brake pad
thickness up close and personal.

 

i think the '88-'91's has a softer pad material because the vacuum servo
on my '89 is much smaller than my 2000 but the brake feels the same.
both have 13/16" brake cylinders.

that's a good point! mine's an auto, but it still engine brakes -
programmed in depending on deceleration rate & initial speed.