Excessive Brake Wear 2016 Prius 4 Touring?

I'd check them myself - not trust their word..

 

perhaps there is a connection with all your previous warning lights.

 

I have to say. My 2017 4 touring feels heavy on brakes when I go to stop. 6k miles in. I had original brakes on my 2010 approx 185k miles before I sold and there were not 60% worn.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

The Gen 3 I believe start out at 10mm. I bought a set of front pads for it around 80k .. thinking it would need them around 100k .... well I was wrong.

When it hit 150k and was getting to the 5 year mark -- I figured a service was a good idea. We clean the brakes every 10k when the wheels come off for it's rotation -- give the pins a spray lube ... but nothing is disassemble. So at 160k I had the fluid changed and both front and rear pads replaced .. we still had about 3mm remaining on all the pads.

Toyota says 1mm and 2mm in different places as the recommended change point. With our usage -- 2mm is about 50k of miles!

The Prius is so easy on the brakes -- it's not like a normal car where you are going to eat through 2mm of pad material in the span of an oil change .... I figured at 5 years it was worth doing the service ..... but I have not purchased pads for any of the newer Prius in the fleet.

The rotors looked new -- a tiny lip on them ... something one of the MB's gets after 10k

 

If their inspection sheet shows 12-7 mm as green then I would assume the pads start out at 12 mm and yours are 1/4 worn. Admittedly this does seem a high rate of wear for a Prius at 15,000 miles, but even at this rate and lets say you change them when they get to 3 mm as I would, you still have another 30,000 miles left. As others have said, I would measure them myself and measure them again in say another 5,000 miles to check the wear rate.

 

The limits for brake pad and disc thickness and runout are in Toyota’s Repair Manual:

General: Specifications: Brake (Front): Service Data

Front disc brake pad lining thickness

Standard: 10.0 mm (0.3937 in.)
Minimum: 1.0 mm (0.0394 in.)​

Front disc thickness

Standard: 25.0 mm (0.9843 in.)
Minimum: 22.0 mm (0.8661 in.)​

Front disc runout

Maximum: 0.05 mm (0.00196 in.)​

General: Specifications: Brake (Rear): Service Data

Rear disc brake pad lining thickness

Standard: 9.5 mm (0.374 in.)
Minimum: 1.0 mm (0.0394 in.)​

Rear disc thickness

Standard: 9.0 mm (0.354 in.)
Minimum: 7.5 mm (0.296 in.)​

Rear disc runout

Maximum: 0.15 mm (0.00591 in.)​

The “standard” values above are for new parts. I believe these limits apply to all 2016–2017 (ZVW5# series) Prius cars, since the same figures appear in the U.S. (RM3200U), European (RM3211E), and Japanese (RM3220J) editions of the Repair Manual.

Interestingly, the U.S. and European editions say to measure the pad thickness with a ruler, but the Japanese edition says to use a vernier caliper. The disc thickness is always to be measured with a micrometer.

[Edited to add:] The consumable parts and their list prices in the U.S. and Japan:

04465-47080 – Pad Kit, Disc Brake, Front (Mark AK NS369H) ($75.45, ¥7,800)
43512-47060 – Disc, Front ($69.67, ¥7,400)

04466-47100 – Pad Kit, Disc Brake, Rear (Mark AK NS254) ($57.26, ¥5,900)
42431-12310 – Disc, Rear ($73.46, ¥5,200)​

The front discs and pads are a new design for the fourth-generation Prius, but the rear discs and pads are the same as those on some older Prius cars and other Toyota models.

 

So actually, the OP is only 10% worn at 15,000 miles and can go down to 90%, meaning he has another 120,000 miles to go. That's more like the wear rate for a Prius. Sounds like his dealer is trying to pull a fast one.
I would call the dealer's bluff and ask them why they say there is excessive brake pad wear and should they repair it under warranty.

 

Thanks for all that info. The starting brake pad thicknesses are the same as third gen. OP's reported 6 mm remaining pad thickness is a little much, at 15,000 miles. Maybe he could jack up the rear of the car, see how freely the wheels turn. Another simpler test: feel the wheels after an extended drive, how warm are they?

 

If you can manage to stop after the extended drive with no use of the brakes (I turn into an empty parking lot, shift into B until slowed to around 7 mph where the car allows shifting to R, then just stab the brake the moment speed crosses zero), it's easy to interpret that test: good Prius brakes will have stone-cold rotors then.

If you used the brakes even a little for stopping even just at the end of your extended drive, you'll be surprised how warm that can leave them, making the test harder to read.

-Chap

 

Sounds like the dealer documented his scam with his own numbers. There was someone else here that went in with 5K and was told the brakes were bad. What amazes me is any dealer would do that at millage like that. I to, had a gen 2 at 200K with no brakes. I'm sure your like me, you drive the new one with a lite touch on the brake pedal.

I wonder, did they put that in writing?

 

The dealer check list is really not set up for the Prius -- 2mm of pad is not much for a large SUV. Where you may need to tell a Tundra owner that they only have 1/2 the pad material .... That could be 80k miles with a Prius. Big SUV's/ cars can need pads every 25k.

 

I had a 2010 with 80% left on the brake pads when I sold it at 88,000 miles. My 2016 touring does feel a little heavier on the brakes, but I go gently and use B mode on long downhill grades. I just had 10K service on the car. Dublin Toyota did a fantastic job in two hours, including a free repair for a parking oops! that pulled screws out of the bottom panels. And they washed the car! They said the brakes look new. Highly recommended service dep.