Brake Pads Wear According to the Dealer

welcome! no, it is not normal. i would start by not going back to this clueless service advisor, he knows nothing about prius brakes.

take a wheel off yourself and measure, now is the time to start learning if your so inclined. you can use the jack that comes with the car, or go to a local mech and ask if they charge for an inspection. your pads should be like new. if not, you'll need a dealer to look for causes under warranty, that would be way too much and premature wear to say the least.

or maybe you want to call them on it, wait a few months and go back. many dealers are shady, but this is way beyond the pale. have them show you the pads while measuring. all the best!

 

i haven't personally experienced it. on my 15,000 service, they wanted me to do a wheel alignment due to 'unusual wear'. now at 30,000, tyres still look like new.

check out member 'mendel leis k's threads, he has some great write ups and pics, and is well studied on prius brakes. most last well over 100,000 miles with just a little preventative maintenance due to regen.

iirc, someone here had the brake pad issue with a dealer, and when he asked them to show him, they said they must have mismeasured or something.

 

Assuming no mechanical defects your break pads should be good for 200,000 to 400,000 miles on a Prius. I'm nearing 150,000 miles on mine and haven't touched them, so much pad left I didn't bother to measure.

 

Original Brake Pads still in good condition at 169,000 miles.
Inspected at 105,000, 140,000, and 160,000

 

From the 2010 Repair Manual:

Brake Pads
New - 10mm
Minimum - 1 mm

I'm pretty sure the brake pads haven't changed from 2010 to 2014, so 12mm sounds like BS.
Get a second opinion (from another dealer) and have them let you watch when they measure.

 

I'm wondering if they actually measured the pads, or just eyeballed it and guessed the number.

I'm expecting my Prius pads to last forever, as I usually get 50-100k+ miles on a set of brakes on a normal car, assuming the calipers don't seize up from road salt and wear unevenly.

 

My dealer uses a checklist form that starts with a brake pad thickness of 12 mm. However, I didn't take that to mean the beginning thickness for my Prius was 12 mm. All it meant to me was that they service vehicles with pads that thick. RRxing posted an excerpt that says "10" and I saw another reference saying "about 11". I don't know what the right answer is, but I wouldn't be concerned about the "9". And how fast they wear depends on a lot of variables, so YMMV.

 

check out the slide pins every now and again, and lube as necessary.

 

New pad thickness is 10 mm on the fronts, 9.5 mm on the rears. This is what I saw, first time I checked mine, pretty easy on the brakes. They do wear, more so in stop-and-go I guess:

km: 43017
* inspected front and rear brakes, pads disassembled and lubed, calipers pins relubed
remaining thicknesses:
front left outer:7.9
front left inner:7.7
front right outer:7.9
front right inner:7.5
rear left outer:7.7
rear left inner:7.1
rear right outer:7.2
rear rignt inner:6.4 (quarter sized fragment brocken off at slot edge)

(Something was messed up with the rear brakes, I replaced pads/shims soon thereafter.)

 

I've done that on occasion, and either find them either in perfect shape or already corroded and stuck. On a Ford at least, it seems to be rather binary based on whether the rubber boot that's supposed to protect the slide pin is working or not.

 

The tech usually eyeballs these things... I had an occasion when I took the car back in less then a week (they admitted NOT rotating the tires due to the error of the service rep)... they did a courtesy inspection as well at the second time and lo and behold EACH break pads grew !!!! One was half a mm (can't even tell how they measure that really in that conditions) but one grew 2 mm ....

so those inspection are almost worthless really...

 

On my 10,000 mile inspection at the dealership, I was told my brake pads were down 10%. So, doing some math, I thought I'd seriously better think about replacement at around 50,000 miles. On my 15,000 inspection, my brake pads grew to being almost no wear. The agent at the dealership said I shouldn't have to worry about brake pads until maybe 100,000 miles and probably not until 150,000 miles. And since then, no mention about brake pads and I'm currently at almost 80,000. I also think they just eyeballed the measurement. Or maybe never knew what the original thickness was in the first place.

Mike

 

when i went to the eye doctor a few years ago, he said i was developing a cataract. i went to a new guy after that, and he says there's nothing there. 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and who knows how much training. so, i guess we have to cut the poor shmucks at toyota a break.

 

Mine went from 11/11/10/10 to 8/8/8/8 to 8/8/8/8 today, so who knows? Admittedly, that second 10,000 mile interval was over a few thousand miles of some very steep mountainous terrain, but my guess is it's just an eyeball estimate.

 

No, the break pads originally are 12mm in thickness out of the factory (I think).