I've been holding on doing this maintenance to get the most out of the OE pads. In all fairness most of these miles are highway, however, as I've started to hit the wear indicators, this maintenance can't be held off any longer. So I pulled the WearEver Platinum pads I picked up on sale a couple years ago out of the closet and finally set about changing the pads. Just over 90k miles on these, and I may have been playing with the idea of welding them to the rotors.

getting the money's worth..


millimeters of pad left...


OE pads/clips next to box with new pads/clips

 

What I did on my Honda CR-V was I ground off the wear indicators and ran the pads further down until that pad was near the metal structure. Not legal but I never saw lack of braking performance - got an extra year out of the pads. Did it for most of the 17 years of her life - no issues.

 

talk about cheap, this got to be the ultimate! I wouldn’t chance it because I sure don’t want to ruin my rotors so I can use pads for a few extra miles.

 

"Highway miles" in DC still means a lot of stop and go LOL

I'm at 88k and just did a tire rotation. I looked the the front brake pads and still have plenty of life, but I'm coming from a rural area so I can go for several miles without touching the brakes. I'll have to take a picture next time I'm doing a rotation.

 

True, though i'm not actually in DC "proper", more or less just chose DC to represent the region in case: car meets. Much of my driving is 95, which can become a parking lot. Though, I avoid stop-and-go by coasting where ever possible. So if that means I'm 10-20 car lengths behind because the morons want to keep leap frogging each other and playing bumper-buddies, so be it.

 

I just replaced mine at 61000 miles. I had bought the pads maybe 2 years ago along with the rotors. I didn't change the rotors because they were still smooth as new (well, almost). There was probably another 5-10K miles left on the pads but since my daughter mainly drives the car, may as well do it since I had the car up on jackstands for an oil change.

 

Oh I'm familiar. I've lived in the DC Metro area since '89 and it's amazing the growth of traffic in the area.

 

I’ll take that as a compliment. I would never risk safety or spend more on rotors to save pads. I was able to stretch those pads out further with no deleterious effect. I also don’t charge lights and stop signs and let engine braking do its thing.

 

My pads looked worse at 40k miles. And yet you couldn't tell from the outside -- the external brake pads looked to have plenty of life left, it was the internal ones that were wearing. And they wore at an angle and the wear indicators never made a peep! If I had not proactively changed them they would have worn all the way down to the discs as far as I can tell. Disappointed in Honda here .. but I did catch it, so I guess it's OK.

I basically never brake. Occasionally I guess I have to. But there's fuel economy to keep in mind when you hit that pedal!

 

If they are wearing that way (internal) then something isn't floating or moving well. The internal pins may not be well lubricated and/or the pistons not sliding well (in/out). Honda's maintenance should catch these things but I doubt that they remove the pads and clean/relube the pad movement areas and shuttle the piston back and forth to look at play (and do a flush of that caliper) because that would be work. My old CR-V lived in the rust belt and Land o' Salt (Minnesota) and with my driving habits (using little braking), the rear calipers both went at ~ 100 (12 years) and ~ 140K (~ 17 years). I flush the fluid reservoir once a year and do a 2 or 3 year full system bleed though.

 

Exactly my strategy. Pliers to rip the indicator off and angle grinder to get the knob out of the way to allow for a no issue pad flip. Thumbs up!