Was driving today noticed I was getting a bit of groan (the 1144's have been noisy in the cold, so maybe I didn't pick up on them fast enough) out of my rear brakes. Took off the wheels to find out that while the out board pads had almost half life on them, the inboards were into the backing plates . I was particularly pissed to find out that they a scored my power slots to the point where I was afraid to reuse them. The kicker was that these pads only had 15k on them. I'm not trying to start a b*tch fest on mintex pads post, they did have 2 track sessions on them and its not like I expect them to last 60k miles, but 15k miles on them is little ridiculous (especially since the fronts are wearing even and have about half life left) and to have them wear that uneven is a little disturbing. Any one else have a similar problem, or at least a plausible explanation? any help on this would be great.

 

For some reason the Mini tends to chew rear pads, and like you mention the inside pads go first.

I believe it is due to the fact that the rear caliper incorporates the parking brake.
I have seen other brand pads go at at 15K in the back.

Guess all of us will have to pay more attention to those inside rear pads.

Victor

 

If I didn't get 36k out of the OE rears (and they still have about 1/3 life on them, that's what I put on the car right now to get me by for a couple weeks) I might not have felt so bad, I'm gonna give hawk hp+'s a shot next time around, anyone try those?

 

with the inboard pad wearing so much faster, you may want to check a couple of things, first, make sure you're parking brake is releasing all the way.(give the lever a tap with a small hammer and watch for travel) On my 02 cooper, they used to hang up just a bit and ate brakes until I changed the calipers. The other is to make sure your caliper slides are properly lubed, if not, they will cause the squeezing action the caliper performs to be uneven.

 

I have been through at least 3 sets of 1144s on the rear of my '03 MCS without experiencing this. You either got a bad set of pads or the caliper is malfunctioning.

Good Luck,

Alan