Had my new tyres put on Friday, and the mechanic showed me that I am having uneven brake wear in the back. My passenger side rear pad has like 1% left on it, the driver side rear has 5% . But the fronts still have like 35%!! WTF?, MATE

I thought the rule of thumb on brakes was like 2 front sets of pads for every 1 back set.

Any ideas? And noooo, I don't do hand brake turns ever!

 

A general rule of thumb to match yoiur thoughts is 60% of the braking comes from the front brakes, therefore one would expect to see greater wear on the front pads. Puzzling? Keep us informed of the answer from MINI.

Good Luck,
SMKKVK

 

One more thing to add to my loooong laundry list for my dealer visit on tuesday

 

Track down YuccaPatrol, he had the same thing happen, discovered it at The Dragon...

 

Back brakes ALWAYS are designed to wear out after the fronts. Your 2 front to 1 back is not always true though. VW designs their, for example, to wear out at the same time. It sounds like you have something wrong on the passenger side brakes.Your best bet is to take it to the dealer to inspect it. Don't let them tell you some crazy thing like "BMW designs the rear to wear out faster. That's normal wear". That's what the VW dealer tried on me not knowing I design brakes for a living.

 

TY TY TY TY ... i'll definitly let you guys know what the dealer says on Tuesday. I really want them to investigate my problem and not just replace the pads.

 

I think yuccapatrol(Andrew) had his

replaced under warranty....

 

i'm so excited now!! I heard that MINI'll pick up the tab for my brakes! (i didn't read my service plan throughly)YAY... lol

 

I took Wanda in for Inspection #1 yesterday and her brakes were measured, showing that the LF/RF were at "9" and the LR/RR were at "7"....

Does anyone know how to interpret those numbers? I was surprised that the fronts were 9 and the rears 7, but have NO clue what those numbers mean. Any translations/interpretations would be much appreciated. :smile:

Hubby suggested that perhaps the rear brakes are not as thick as the front, since our MINIs are front-wheel drive. Thoughts?

Edit: I forgot to mention that Wanda has 33.2K miles on her original brakes.

Clo/Wanda

 

I can't comment on how brakes are designed. However, on the 2000 VR6 Jetta I had prior to the MCS, my back pads were worn out at 35K miles. I kept the original rear rotors and got new pads. When the car was totalled at 73K miles, it still had the original front pads and rotors, and they still had some life left.

 

I've now seen a few occasions where '02 MINI's have a tendency to wear their rear pads quicker than the front. Perhaps an odd caliper design that doesn't retract the piston correctly? I suppose only time will tell on whether the '03's and beyond have similar rear brake issues. In the meantime, everyone should keep an eye on their pad wear everytime they rotate tires (which should be every few thousand miles of street-only driving)

 

You scared me there for a minute! I thought you're referring to your back breaking. After reading the post, I was relieved. It's your rear brake on your MINI, not your "back breaking."

It's good to know that your dealership took care of the problem. On the other hand, if it was your back, that might not have been covered under MINI warranty.

 

Yes, I had uneven pad wear on my rear brakes at the Dragon in May. A single rear pad was completely shot and grinding grooves into the rotor while the other 3 back there were mostly ok.

Because of the uneven wear, MINI replaced them under warranty. I am going to keep an eye on the inside right pad this time and see if it wears faster than the others. If so, then I would suspect a caliper problem on my 03 MCS.

This happened at less than 24k miles. . .

 

Yucca, I was the one among the trip up to the Dragon that had the brake warning light come on. After the Dragon, I ran by Nashville and they replaced my rear pads, rotors and sensor. I had just over 21,000 miles.

Could it be that the emergency brake cable may be a little to tight and causing it to not release the tension on the rear brakes completely.

 

my back brakes were replaced at 15,000 miles, the service advisor thought I was doing E-Brake turns. That was awfully nice of him. I got pretty furious, so anyways they replaced the new brakes under warranty and the front ones have not been changed with almost 19,000 miles on my car.

 

sure sounds like a defective caliper, which also means that it is not doing wonders for a whole lot of other things like the bearing on that side and of ocourse the performance of the car. I would ABSOLUTELY positively insist on a caliper replacement and not just pad replacement. It is NOT proper or natural that one side should wear significantly different than the other.

MINI CLO re your question on the numbers, I have never heard of such a thing...it cannot be inches, it cannot be centimeters or even millimeters. I am guessing it is a rating with 10 being perfect. I would suggest you ask the dealership exactly what they mean.

 

:smile: Thanks, PRO! I'll call the dealership and ask about that. I think it was a mm thickness measurement, but I'm not sure?!? Once I get a satisfactory explanation, I'll post it here.

Clo/Wanda

 

On some cars, and someone can verify if this runs true with the MINI, when you are on the highway speeds and brake lightly to slow down a few MPH, your rear brakes might actually be doing the work there rather than your fronts. Of course your fronts are working but there is some kind of bias for your rear to do the braking on these situations. If you brake any harder to slow down, say, more than 5mph your fronts have already taken over as the primary pressure.

I remember reading this on the VW forums for people who would drives LOTS and LOTS of freeway. The signs were basically that the rear wheels, funny enough, would be significantly dirtier with brake dust than the front everytime.

So it's interesting, don't know how true it is, but people DID have more brake dust on the rear wheels for some reason. Goodnightie!

 

with the way the traction control and abs functions with this car i would not be suprised with uneven wear, for example driver tend to have a favorite turn side,(they will turn more aggressive to one side vs the other) and with independently controlled braking as with traction control one side may get more aggressive braking then the other, also to help gain controllablility the front rear bias may manipulate to individual situations, therefore the rear wearing out faster doesnt suprise me either, for example of that think of a motorcyle front brake are rarley use due to almost imediate loss of control(if it locks up) whereas the rear locking up you still maintain lots of control. now with that said i do realize that the majority of stopping power is in the front brakes, but from my understanding thats one of the many "significant" improvement of the traction controll that the MINI has, istead of a front rear bias traction control and abs, it can controll each wheel individually, therefore greater traction gains

 

I dont have any expert knowledge, but that VW brake dust analysis sounds a bit fishy to me. More dust on the rears could be the result of any number of factors. Im tempted to think its due to the aerodynamics at highway speed the prevent dust build-up on the fronts and not the rears.

in any event, I like the idea that the selective braking might be the cause for some uneven wear, but it sounds like it might be more extreme than that. Maybe its this combined with a caliper problem?

P

 

If your car is equipped with the traction control system, tires of slightly different diameter or of different pressure could cause the traction control to pulse a brake on one corner causing uneven tire wear.

Additionally I would think that an overtightened parking brake adjustment could contribute to this.

It's all well and good that the dealer is replacing the pads, but you need to determine what caused this and fix it so that it doesn't happen again.

Good luck,

 

Traction control only affect the driven wheels and could not contribute to rear brakes wearing unevenly or more quickly. I believe (I have not yet inspected mine to be sure) that the MINI has a drum-in-hat configuration on the rear brakes. Can anyone confirm this? If this is the case, no amount of hardbrake driving will cause your pads to wear, since the handbrake is affecting the drum inside the hat instead of the normal braking caliper.

I would agree that light braking would cause more even braking between front and rear since the brake proportionality is performed by EBD (the ABS unit) instead of a proportioning valve. This said, EBD will only apply if the ABS unit sense high deceleration. If most of your braking is done using mild braking you would tend to wear the fronts and rears more evenly.

 

So if I am purchasing my third set of pads (front and rear) and my second set of rotors, and my mini only has 7K miles on it. Does that mean I am heavy on brakes?

Actually, I think my wear is about normal - at least 4000 miles are track, autocross or rally related. And our local track is very heavy on brakes.

 

The EBD braking control system (that has replaced brake bias valves on many newer cars) is capable on some cars of applying more rear brake force under some circumstances, for instance light braking. I'm not sure if they are programmed that way with MINI. I know that newer Volvos use the system to try to equilize brake pad use front-rear. I've seen the same report of rear brake pads sometimes wearing before fronts on a Volvo message board.

 

Just got back from the dealer about my brake issue. The Service Manager told me that the MINI's brakes are biased to the back just a little, so the backs wear alittle faster than the fronts. And between the factory bias and the DSC, they wore the way they did.
You are correct about thoes numbers, they are your pad measurements in mm. MINI replaces the brakes at "2" mm or less. My car was a half mm away from getting the replacement pads!! 1/2mm! They couldn't drive around the block with the brakes on for me? LOL
The service manager told me just to drive the car till the breaks were metal to metal and grinding I guess MINI doesn't care about replacing rotors or calipers either!