Questions about my "multipoint inspection" results (picture)

I would first advise that you never go wherever this was again. Second, get out that jack in the back of your car and take one of the back wheels off, and take a measurement. Third, I would find out what the brand new pads are supposed to be in the manual. Then I would no doubt find that the technician was lying his nice person off and i would call that number and shove it down their throat until i got something for free. Preferably all the filters you "need", and then do it yourself.

This is the reason I do all my own maintenance.

 

Lol calm down Loop.

Chicken, take a look at the pics I took for you. At 15,000 miles they said mine was 9 9 3 3 (RF LF RR LR). At 20,000 miles they said 8 8 5 5. I guess brake lining grows, huh? No, like tire tread, these brake measurements are incredibly subjective. Your brakes are fine even the "yellow zone."

You are correct that the rear brakes wear faster for some reason, as our numbers show. I use the E-brake too but I'm certain that has anything to do with it. There's no friction on the brake when the car isn't moving.

BTW, try saying "rear brakes wear faster" 10 times in a row. It's not easy man! :rockon:

 

Chicken, you should check out this thread:

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...roubleshooting/18209-changing-brake-pads.html

Apparently the rear brake pads are thinner to begin with, as standard. And I don't think you should ever have to worry about brakes on the Prius. Very few of us ever have.

From looking at that thread, I'm guessing xs650 will chime in about this soon too.

 

Lulz, it's easy enough to measue the linings yourself. Per the Toyota Repair manual Gen III front linings are 10mm thick and rear are 9.5mm thick when new. They are acceptable down to 1mm thick, although you probably shouldn't go below 2 mm unless you check them yourself at frequent enough intervals.

Most people seem to get over 100k miles on a set of Prius brake linings but that can vary a lot depending on how you drive.

Even an "honest" dealer will probably just eyeball the linings and guess at their thickness, a dirtbag dealer will report an unrealistically low number.

 

Wow! It's like you're psychic or something!

 

It's not uncommon for rear brake pads to wear faster than fronts on a vehicle with electronic brakeforce distribution, especially when the vehicle is typically stopped in a gentle fashion.

 

Yeah, I would worry about your rear breaks but not your rear brakes. lol... Tom?

Do it sometimes too.

 

This is the first time anyone has ever suggested the rear brake pads wear faster on a Prius. The Gen III was the first US Prius to have rear disk brakes. Prior to that the US got drums on the rear. While the rest of the world got disks on all 4 wheels. Many of the 2010 Gen IIIs are at 40k and above. I would assume that we would hear from any and all of the owners needing brake pads at this early date.

 

This is true for a lot of cars, especially for a number of th newer VW and Honda cars.

However, my experience so far with the Gen III Prius is that it has a significant front brake bias, so I would be quite surprised if the rears wore out first. For example, when I picked up my Prius last Saturday, I took it to a quiet road to bed in the pads. I made 15 stops in a row from 40 MPH, in N, to seat the pads. After this process, the front pads were smoking heavily and it was obvious that a moderate amount of material had transferred to the new rotors. On the other hand, on the rears it looked like only a light amount of material was transferred and the brakes were not nearly as hot as the fronts.

MB860 ?

 

I can see one situation where the rear brakes would wear faster than the fronts. But I do not know if the Prius braking system is sophisticated enough to do that.

No pad wear: Only using regen for braking
Fronts wear more than rears: Hard braking

Possibly......
A lot of braking just over the amount that regen provides. If, and that's a big word, the Prius brake system applies in the rear brakes first when you go a bit over regen brakiing.

I would need to see more than some dealer's shop guy eyeball estimate of pad wear before I could believe that actually happened though.

 

Sorry for changing the subject slightly, but in the 500 miles or so that I have driven my Gen III, I would guess that 2/3 of my stops feel like they were done by friction braking. I think this is confirmed by the heavier pad deposits and scoring on the front rotors. On the Gen II I drove, it felt like more regenerative braking was taking place. Does the Gen III's regenerative braking only used during very light stops?


MB860 ?

 

You need to call the number on that sticker immediately and ask them for an email address. Cut copy and paste the link for this thread to that account.
They're crooks!!
Tell all your friends.

FWIW...Priuses aren't really set up for doing e-brake turns, so you'll unlikely be wearing out your rear brakes by (normally) applying the parking brake. It's like wearing out a pencil eraser by placing it into a holder blunt end down. Doesn't work that way. No rubbing. No brake wear.
It torques me off that an allegedly good brand (Toyota) cannot police its franchisees any better than they do.
Every time I have a GM worked on---which is like, 3 times in the last 10 years they mail me a customer satisfaction survey form about 4 weeks later.
If Toyota does this for you...clue them in.

Good Luck in school!!!

 

Rear drum brakes are still fairly common. Rear disk brakes are kind of complicated by the inclusion of parking brake. The second gen Honda Civic Hybrid started out for 06 with rear drum brakes, then maybe 2 years later was revised to disk brakes. The 3rd gen, just coming out (sometime ), supposedly reverts to rear drum brakes.

Bottom line, rear brakes do less work than front, are more suited to parking brake application, and can be lower maintenance.

 

My wife had the car at the dealership today for routine maintenance at 30K miles today and the dealership reported that car needs rear brake pads, shims, and rotors for $585 plus tax. Report stated left and right front brake pads are 8 mm, and both rears are "less than 1 mm" and uneven.

Everything I've read says this is ridiculously early for this kind of repair. Any thoughts? If the pads are that worn, are the rotors definitely going to need to be replaced? I haven't been home to take the wheel off to check the pads myself.