Not sure if you actually need to inspect wear sensors, or if it's just recommended. Anyone who has used up their brakes at 27,000 miles is either driving a race-car, or seriously mental. I have never heard of factory brakes lasting less than 50,000 miles.


I bought my first MINI in 2002 and have been working on them since. IME most folks will go thru a set of OE pads in less than 30,000 ... I'm pretty much a 'nanny' driver and seldom got more than 25,000 out of a set of OE or EBC. On the flip side the pads on my Miata were good for over 120,000 miles.

I feel sorry for the people who take their mini to the dealer and get shafted out hundreds of dollars when they are misled by service advisors.


Knowing what to look for brake pad wise IS a good idea. I had a MINI dealer tell me I needed new pads 'right now' on my 2002, which had no wear sensors btw. My miles was just over 30,000 and I'd just passed out of pre-pay maint' and the dealer had not changed pads under maint'. So I asked him to show me .... I knew I'd changed pads about 5k back .... oh, I guess we got cars mixed, up, sorry . . Brakes are one of those things, people who don't know are wise enuf not to ignore ... sadly it often costs them money. I know it cost ME money until I learned how SIMPLE it is to look/see.


I've posted pictures MANY times of what a good pad and a 'needs to be replaced' pad looks like from the OUTSIDE of the wheel. Need I do that again?


Lastly, the GEN2 MINI has TWO brake wear systems. One is a miles counter that tries to judge your driving vs wear. Not much different from the oil change warning ... it mostly counts miles. When it gets to zero you get a light. You can reset that light thru the OBC. First time mine came on in my 7, I looked at the pads and reset the light ... I had plenty of pad left. The other system is the wear sensor which trips when the pad gets thin enuf to wear the sensor tip off and break a wire. The only way to turn off the light in this case is to close the short caused by the broken wire in the sensor. Two ways to do this: replace the pads and install a new sensor; cut off the sensor and splice the sensor' wire ends together . . .


btw - because of how the sensor works .. cleaning off gunk won't do anything. One could say it TRIPS by having the gunk cleaned off . . .


here's a tripped sensor, still in the worn pad ... look closely in the circles and you can see the stubs of the wire imbedded in the plastic. The pad thinned allowing the sensor to contact the rotor. As the rotor ate the pads it also ate the tip of the sensor. Eventually the tip of the sensor wore enuf so that the imbedded wire loop was broken. The resulting open circuit causes the warning light.

 

You are welcome, hope you were able to fix it. There are a lot of threads on this website asking about this same issue, so I hope anyone looking for their answer will eventually see here.

 

My problem I thought it began after heavy breaking on the expressway off ramp. To solve the problem just reset the maintenance "counter"

 

I was on my second set of OEM pads when the wear sensors gave a warning at about 45k miles, and we are not hard on brakes. The black dusty OEM pads are just soft. I replaced them with dustless Akebonos, wirh new sensors, and the difference is truly freaking amazing. No dust and far better pedal modulation and stopping. BTW, on my Mini, on all 4 corners the inside pads were all SIGNIFICANTLY more worn than the outside, easy to see pads, which had plenty of pad left. Do NOT ASSUME the wear is equal and base an evaluation on the easy to see outer pad. I don't knowmif this is common to all Minis or just the S cars. The difference between each pads thickness was more than any other car I've ever done a brake job on.

 

I've got the same problem and now because of the warning lites I can't pass state emissions (??) inspection. Car has all new brakes and rotors and I've since driven 2500 miles with NO problems but the annoyance of the lites and the lack of an inspection sticker.

ISAMIN