might be of interest. short version: here is a brake pad with 108,000 miles on it from our prius (left) compared to a new brake pad (right). there is a tl;dr version with the full (frustrating) story of why we did this, but i am waiting for the conclusion of said story before i post it.
I, too, am glad to see you on PC Gal! Are you estimating that at about 50% wear? A little hard to tell from the pick with the color difference and such. a light background would be better too.
thanks guys! glad to see you too! about 50% of the usable pad material is worn off. really not bad, huh? i expected them to look worse than that, considering the only brake work we've done is clean/adjust. but any savings on frequency of replacement are negated by the list price of OEM pads. they're not cheap, even with the deal we got. we also turned the rotors, there was a little minor rust tracking. DH just took it on a test drive and commented on how nice the brakes feel. so at least we have that.
So when do we get the rest of the story? Why change them with another 100k miles of usable brakes left?
i'll post the rest when the story is all said and done. it might be a while, but i want to get all the loose ends tied up before making my final judgment calls and publicly blasting companies that need to be publicly blasted. (though right now i have zero qualms blasting progressive insurance.) i am not thrilled about having to toss 100k worth of brake pad, but it wasn't really a choice.
That's pretty good life. Edmunds' InsideLine had a 04 Prius with ~85k and they had to replace the pads. One of the editors did it themselves and their picture of the pad showed it was worn to the indicator.
I guess that depends on what you consider normal. My household's last three non-hybrids -- spouse's too, not just mine -- did better than that on their original pads long before we heard there was a fuel-saving technique called DWB (driving without brakes).
Why does the new pad looks so much thicker than mine? Re: brake pad check: 108,000 miles I don't use the brake much at all but at 15K the pad looked not much thicker than the 108K one in the above picture, definitely much thinner than new: In fact since I first looked at 5K it wasn't nearly as thick as the new one: Weird.
Hey a new post from galaxee (and a new thread too!) Our 2005 has just over 100,000 miles and still has at least 50% brake pad life left.
