A citroen curiously may well have pad warning light. The french were into that..alway went wrong of course. The frenceh are ino that too.
No need to use 'branded' parts.
Take to local exhaust center etc. They usually do t ejob fast cheap and well.
The usual brake warning light is linked to a sensor on the brake fluid reservoir. If you lose brake fluid it will light up. If there is ABS there is probably something that shows a fault in that system. Fancy cars may have sensors for pads, but I would not rely on their accuracy.
If it's trustworthy you don't need to see the old pads. If it's not trustworthy they will get something out of the bin and say it came from your car.
djc coughed up some electrons that declared:
I'm not sure why they should not be accurate. I can think of 3 obvious ways to engineer such a sensor:
1) Contacts buried in pad that complete the circuit when the pad wears enough for the disc to bridge them; 2) A buried wire which once the pad is worn below a certain level, is itself worn through and thus becomes open circuit; 3) A displacement sensor that measures pad travel.Of these, I could not tell you which ones are used in which cars, but it seems to me that both 1 and 2 are simple, with 2 probably being the most inherently reliable (and failsafe).
3 is possible, but I can't see why it would be used in favour of 1 or 2 as it's the mostly likely to go wrong.Cheers
Tim
Tim S gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Indeed. 1 & 2 are most common - 1 earths a live through the bulb, so completing the circuit, rather than bridging between two pads.
Either are, of course, prone to crappy connections and broken wires in the wheelarch. In that case, 1 will typically fail to warn, whilst 2 will warn when the pads are fine.
"Phil L" wrote
Totally agree. The old "brakes need replacing" is the oldest trick in the book for generating income with un-necessary repairs using scare tactics. That isn't to say that some genuinely need changing, but a lot of garages try this routine on. If they're getting low, they'll be picked up as a warning, but not a fail, on your MOT.
Personally, I wouldn't trust any mechanic as far as I could throw one. I believe they generally can't help but take the piss whenever the possibility arises. I knew a mechanic who'd laugh about applying "wanker tax" to people he didn't like who's car he'd worked on. The reality was it was him who was the wanker by charging for work which hadn't been done.
I purchased a 5yr old citroen from an indy garage many years ago. It had a main dealer full service history. When I got it home I discovered it'd never had anything serviced on it other than the oil drained out of it and replaced. The air filter was unlike any other I've ever seen.
Again, I sold a car back to a main dealer (peugot) after servicing it myself for the three years I had owned it. They put it on sale on their forecourt stating it had full service history. The sneaky buggers had stamped the book themselves.
I'm not bitter and twisted. Much ;)
That seems a lot of money to replace a set of pads which is usually a quick and simple job using inexpensive parts. I guess that they are only referring to the front ones as they tend to wear out sooner (weight is thrown onto the front wheels during braking and the split of effort can be up to 20% rear / 80% front on some cars and driving styles). The 70% figure really shouldn't be relied on as accurate either, it tends to be a figure of speech based on a quick look rather than arrived at by measuring the remaining pads and calculating that percentage of the specified thickness. Could be anything really, 50%,
60%, 70%, 80%, 90% who knows?I hate grubbing around with cars but my advice is to bite the bullet and learn to do some of the simpler DIY tasks yourself, that way you know when the pads need replacing and indeed you know when they are taking the p****. On most cars checking the pad wear is simple, often it can be done by parking with the wheels at full lock, if not then you only need to take each wheel off in turn and look. Pads usually (perhaps "always" as I've never seen pads without) have a channel in them which indicates the remaining wear so all you're doing is looking to see how deep the channel is. Your own sums and the garage tell you that you won't wear the pads out very soon so maybe make a note on your calendar to check them at about, say, 5,000 miles from now. Thinking about it you might be best to check them straight away and make a note of the groove depth then when you check them in 5k you can better judge whether they will make it to the next service or not.
When you do decide to get them replaced phone around as that price sounds high.
Good luck.
I have never seen a sensor linked to a brake fluid reservoir that tells you when the pads need changing. However I have had a few VH Cavaliers and if the reservoir is exactly on the max mark when new pads are fitted then the low brake fluid sensor light used to flash on and off when I went around bends when the pads were just about to wear out.
Adam
On what?
Certainly doesn't on My C-MAX. Didn't on my T reg Focus either. Not even sure it does on the pug 206.
How exactly would that work - most pads don't have sensors.
Brake fluid level monitoring is common, and ABS warning lights are standard (on ABS fitted cars obviously :)). Pad lights are far from standard.
Darren
The Ford Sierra used it.
Not that you would want to buy or drive one.
Adam
ARWadsworth coughed up some electrons that declared:
At least it's not French.
The message from "ARWadsworth" contains these words:
You may have missed a good experience. I ran a 4 x 4 estate for some 10 years which is the longest I have ever run a car. As a driving experience it was twice as good as the nominally similar Audi Quatro that replaced it. That only lasted half as long. I wonder how long the BMW will last? Which BMW, incidentally cost me £160 last year when the pad warning light came on. The local exhaust place (no, not quickfix) insisted on replacing the front disks as well as well as the front pads.
The BMW one - other uses it too so probably from the brakes maker - consists of a plastic covered loop which clips into a cutout in the pad. The loop is so that if the connection isn't made or the wires broken or whatever it results in the warning showing.
Eventually, the plastic loop makes contact with the disc, the plastic wears through and the conducting loop makes contact with the disc, latching on the warning circuit. It's pretty foolproof - but more expensive than a carbon brush embedded in the pad. But much more reliable.
For legal purposes in the EU on cars the only brake warning lights required are for fluid level and the handbrake. Everything else such as dual circuit failure - i.e 'pressure related' as in your posting above, and pad wear are optional.
If you have ABS then the above still stands with the addition of one more warning light that has to be separate from those specified above.
The discs on modern BMWs do wear quickly. They have the minimum thickness stamped on the hub if you want to argue with the garage. But two sets of pads to one disc is about par. However, the discs are cheap and easy to change - they never seize in place unlike many. And this sort of wear could just be the price you pay for superb performance.
We are talking here about warning lights for brake pad wear, and I can assure you that later models of the Renault 30 did indeed have them, and as several here have said it was by no means the first to do so.
Sadly that is all too common.
Modern disks subjected to grit and trash and water simply don't last more than 50k miles usually. One used to simply skim them, but that is frowned upon, and is more work for the garage than a new set.
Think it's also down to non asbestos pads being harder on discs.
"Dave Plowman (News)" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
It is - but there's also the price of disks. A new set used to be expensive - hundred or more quid. Now, they're similar price to the pads, even vented.
I never worked out how the Berlingo brake warning sensor worked. There were trailing wires sticking out of the brake pads that were only just long enough to reach the plug they were supposed to attach to (non genuine pads). As the wires were too short they rubbed on the discs and wore through within a few miles of fitting them. An orange light lit up on the dashboard and then went out.
The odd thing is I only ever remember having to change them once in 120K miles.
Adam
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