Are these car brakes worn?

[Jo]

Hello,

My car was taken to a garage for an unrelated problem. The garage said my brakes were worn and needed replacing. They charged me =A330 for the parts and =A355 for labour (excluding VAT).

The guy seemed shifty - he said if I paid with cash I wouldn't need to pay VAT!

these brakes worn and were his charges reasonable? I estimate the thickness of the abrasive portion of the parts to be 5mm thick.

Sorry for my ignorance on the subject, I'm a medical student!

Thanks.

Jo

[the-sbray]

No they are not worn. Those pads have 1000's of miles left.

[Adrian]

Jo gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

They look like they've got plenty of life left.

£30 for parts? What car? £55 to change 'em? Depends where you are. In the SE, that's towards the lower end of average for an hour's labour - which is not unreasonable. For a little back-street place in the frozen wastelands ooop north, it seems steep.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Jo saying something like:

Depends purely on your style and pattern of driving, but I'd say there's anything from 5K to 20K miles left in those.

[John Whitworth]

5mm is plenty. What often happens though, is that the garage tells you stuff that would probably need doing in 12 months time. It's a common trick, and I usually tell them I'll pop back in a month or so, and never do. £85 probably isn't bad for a complete replacement of brake pads at one end of the car. Though I generally do my own brakes, and often do the discs as well, so not sure on costs of pad alone. That said, I tend to go for Mintex, which I think are reasonable quality - whereas your local garage will probably be using something a bit cheaper.

I've had two blinding attempts by garages trying to s**nk me. First was almost twenty years ago. Took Mk3 Escort into Formula 1 for a new cambelt. Was done quickly, but when being shown it afterwards, was told that the noisy knocking noise was my valves, and that they could do with replacing. They would "do it as a favour over the weekend for me, for only £400!" Was sure that it didn't do it before, so took it home, with it driving absolutely dreadfully. Soon fixed it though, as what they'd done was not bother to re-time it. So I just lined up the manufacturer's mark on the distributor and engine, and all was fine.

Second attempt was from a garage that I'd actually started to trust. They replaced my clutch as a result of a failed seal, which leaked loads of antifreeze into the bellhousing. Not sure how that happened - or if it was true. Anyway - £550 later, I had a new, non-slipping, though never as good as the original clutch. A year later, I go in for servicing, and they say "we've noticed your clutch needs replacing - it's understandable with the age of the car". I reminded them that they'd fitted one last year, and after a quick check on the computer, the requirement for a new clutch quickly became 'for another customer's car'.

Oh - and then there was Essex Ford, who had the audacity to list 'new pollen filter housing' required on the after service notifications. Yes - it did need a new pollen filter - and which bunch of monkeys had broken it!!

JW

[Gio]

My car was taken to a garage for an unrelated problem. The garage said my brakes were worn and needed replacing. They charged me £30 for the parts and £55 for labour (excluding VAT).

The guy seemed shifty - he said if I paid with cash I wouldn't need to pay VAT!

these brakes worn and were his charges reasonable? I estimate the thickness of the abrasive portion of the parts to be 5mm thick.

Sorry for my ignorance on the subject, I'm a medical student!

Thanks.

Jo

Hi,

1st, it is interesting that he handed you or left on your car the old parts. If shifty then being viewed as an 'easy customer' I would have thought your parts would have been "in the bin" and not handed back. 2nd, by parts do you just mean just the pads or were the disks changed too? If pads and disks then I feel that was a very good price. If pads only then not knowing what quality was fitted and expecting the lowest cost price items to be installed then the price is a little steep. e.g. From a Vauxhall dealer front pads for my Zafira are £30.80 retail or £18.42 trade cash a/c.

As for changing unnecessary items, I assume he consulted with you before going ahead with the unrelated change and perhaps spoke about when was your last service done etc because he may have been genuinely thinking about your safety. If for example you are expecting to drive say 20,000 miles before the next service then it would be beneficial to have them changed or say you live in a hilly area. Personally I would leave them till they neared 3mm of friction material left if they were parallel and not tapered due to uneven wear / semi seized calliper but then again, when do you think you would actually look at the pads on the car or would you drive it till they were metal to metal and no friction material left. By then your disks are being destroyed too. As ever with these things the parts are relatively cheap, it is when it is combined with dealer overheads to carry out this relatively simple task that the bill becomes unpalatable.

Gio

[Andy]

Are these brakes worn and were his charges reasonable? I estimate the thickness of the abrasive portion of the parts to be 5mm thick.

[martin]

Na, loads of wear left in them

Those would do me a couple of years of driving

[AlanG]

You don't get a receipt and no proof of work done if anything goes wrong

Replacing pads depends also on the disc thickness. It wears too you know. Quite possible to need a change at 5 or 6 mm depending on the mechanical characteristics and wear. But even on a good disc I've been recommended it should be done at a minimum of 2mm. Safety first.

On the pics they look borderline.

A quick search pulled up this. Reading it and looking at the pics should give you some idea. Its rear pads but the principle is close enough.

[Jo]

I live in Cambridge. He charged for 1.5 hours of labour and just the brake pads were replaced.

Jo

[Adrian]

Jo gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Reasonable hourly rate, but I think he seems to have included eating his sandwiches & making a cuppa or two in the amount of time.

[Ste]

It wasn't a tyre outfit was it? They are notorious for crooks trying to do unnecessary work. But yes, the price in principle seems to be within the reasonable range, although you may be able to get it cheaper.

They are worn, but not necessarily to the point of requiring replacement. I assume these are the front pads. Starting thicknesses vary, but are typically around 10mm or so, and under average yearly mileage and typical driving styles pads can be expected to last a few years from new. The legal minimum for pads if I recall correctly is

1.5mm, and realistically anything approaching 2mm requires imminent replacement. If the pads are down to 4mm or less at the time of a routine service, you'd expect a garage to discuss with the customer the potential need for replacement before the next yearly service.

It's difficult to accurately gauge the thickness because of the perspective and low resoluton of the picture. I'd say replacement may have been premature. It would help if you could take another picture of just the top-right pad, because that one looks the thinnest, and from the opposite edge to the one now showing (i.e. from the same edge as the bottom-right pad), and perhaps put the pound coin against the pad material (so that the coin is sitting on one of the protrusions from the side of the backing plate).

[Ian Jackson]

In message , AlanG writes

In my experience, on new pads, the lining is around 5 or 6mm- about twice as thick as the metal backing. These are as thick as the metal backing, so must be a good 3mm thick. There are still quite a few miles left in them.

However, the linings do look a bit beaten up around the edges. Did the garage find them difficult to remove? It may be that the reason for changing them was that they were very tight (or even seized) in the callipers (which hold the pads), and had to be levered out. If so, even if all that was needed was to free them off, it would hardly been worth while replacing them (as they are 2/3 worn to their minimum safe thickness).

I remember by (second-hand) Cord Cortina. The handbook distinctly said to change the pads when they were 2mm thick. When I checked mine (about

6 months after buying the car, and 5000 miles later), they were 1mm thick, so obviously no action was required!

[Adrian]

Ste gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

There is no "legal minimum" for brake pads. You're thinking of tyres, I suspect.

[js.b1]

Brake pads are replaced if...

- Pads have tapered (worn more at one end)

- Pads have chunked (broken up perimeter

- Pads are below about 3mm or higher if long service interval

Brake discs & pads are replaced if...

- Braking pulses noticeably due to warped brake discs

- Brake disc has blue, cracks, deep grooves

- The latter tends to suggest frozen caliper (buy remanufactured)

Some cars are hard on their brake pads - others hard on their brake discs. That is even with normal town driving rather than "spirited" - it comes down to vehicle weight, rotor size, pad size and so on.

If the service interval is 12,000 miles you may be ok on the old pads. If it is 24,000 miles on brakes you may not be - however most garages comment at the MOT if pads are worn.

It might be worth doing a Google for basic car maintenance - just to understand the basics when dealing with mechanics, that way you know when to be suspicious or not. Specifically what brake pad wear looks like, when replacement is due, what brake disc wear looks & feels like, when tracking is out re tyres or not, when a clutch is going & how to test a clutch. Otherwise you look like a wallet and will get treated like it - not by all mechanics, but some.

A good place to ask car questions is the technical question of

which has ASE L1 Master Techs. They can pinpoint specific gotchas with a car, be it an old student car or the latest offering.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Depends. They will certainly be sub par on an long highs speed brake. They are not worn OUT, but they are worn. Marginal call. If you are a once a year service person, and do more than 8000 miles a year, then replacing them is a good idea. If ypu do less than 5000, they almost definitely wont be worn *to the point of damaging the discs* in a year. Although they will be definitely likely to get a bit hot and lose efficiency.

If it were my car, Id do it, if it was the parents car doing 3000 a year on a tight budget, I wouldn't.

[Michael Swift]

In article , js.b1 writes

And automatics, which are the only ones I can drive, some of mine ate disc pads.

Mike

[Ste]

That's actually more common than you may think!

[The Natural Philosopher]

- no pad material left is not the point at which the brakes are worn to the point of needing replacement: as that article points out, less than half the original thickness is where you start thinking about it. The same goes for disks, Skimmed discs are no longer accepted, not because they are not flat, but because most car brakes rely on a big chunk of steel to absorb heat in a highs speed emergency stop. very few road cars can do more than one or at most two stops from 100mph, in a row, or three or four from 70mph.

- that site is a racing car site: see above for why brakes need to be more than 'MOT specification'

So I say, marginal call. If you drive slow, and not often, and dont use the brakes much and are a skinflint, they would do a year. If not, they would have scored the discs within a year. Costing a LOT more.

I just spent 400 quid on replacing two exhaust gaskets. Camper passed its MOT but was blowing from the manifgold, and I was getting dopey and a headache after a hundred miles or so.

Every single stud needed drilling, extracting and replacing. They say it took them two man days. I actually believe them, too. I've done a bit of that in my time.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There really is no miniumum safe thickness.

lest juts hope you never have to brake from a slightly illegal 90mph to a stop on a motorway.

I did that once, and the last 50 yards were..interesting. Almost no brakes left.

Yes, front pads were almost worn out. Discs were not to hot either. Or rather they were red hot nearly by the time I had.