Last few months I've been driving less, for some reason... A week or two ago, I fired up Ollie ('04 Justa) after he'd been sitting a week or so, and saw the brake wear light. I knew the front pads were getting close, but thought I still had SOME life left in them.

Started shopping around for brakes and brake jobs. I went to the local Car Parts Store to borrow their OBD scanner to see if I could figure out why the SES light had been on intermittently (bad rear O2 sensor... figured I'd swap that out while I had the car up to do the brakes). When I started the car again, the brake wear light went out.

I've put 4-5 drive cycles on the car to try to get the light to come back on, and it hasn't.

I understand how the sensor works, which is why I'm surprised it went out. It also doesn't seem like it should have anything to do with the OBD.

I'm looking at brakes on Pelican, and I'm kind of overwhelmed by the number of choices. Anybody got a favorite for an R50 that doesn't do anything special but also has some coating or something so it doesn't instantly rust to death? And should I throw a new sensor in my cart, or is it possible I got a false alarm? I've got at least a quarter inch of pad left...

 

You can just pull the sensor at the caliper and take a look at it. Should be obvious if it has any wear at all.
Shouldn't need to do anything other than remove the wheel in order to do that.

 

Good point. Will try jacking it up and taking a look.

 

I've been using Brembo OEM style rotors and their ceramic pads for a couple of replacement cycles now; they're not expensive, promote less brake dust than even EBC greenpads and the latest generation rotors have a gray powdercoating(?) finish where they used to develop surface rust.I bought them from Tire Rack last in 2017 and the total was less than $400