alright so i have an 06 coupe i got back in 08. I have been kinda noticing that brakes are starting to go, or at least my mind thinks they are starting to go. I bought the car with 26k on it now it has 42k. my question is how can i tell if it still has the original pads on it? would the original pads even have lasted this long?

 

The current brake pads won't last that long. You can tell if you need pads by taking a flashlight and looking to see how thick your pads are. Should be more than 1/4" thick, if less consider getting a set of HAWK HPS pads from our MARKETPLACE under vendor brakes. They double the life of your pads and you'll have close to zero brake dust on your wheels...Gary

 

It completely depends on how you drive your car as to how long your pads last. If you do a lot of city/backroads driving and are heavy on the brakes (in terms of driving mannerisms) and your car has an auto-tranny, chances are you'll be burning through brake pads like crazy. On the other end of the spectrum... If you do tons of highway driving, are light on the brakes, and have a 6MT..... you could get a serious amount of mileage out of your factory brake components.

I have 41K on my original Brembo Brakes on my '04 6MT, and I still have plenty of pad life left to get me through next year. I don't do a ton of highway driving, but I am really light on my brakes and use some compression braking to slow the car down to some degree much of the time. I bought a set of Project Mu B-force brake pads for my car like 3 years ago, and they've been sitting on the shelf just waiting for me to install them for whenever that day arrives that I next check my pad thickness and find out that they're getting close to worn. I usually check them about 4 times a year by just taking a vernier and slipping it in between the spokes on my rim and getting an idea of how much beef is left on the outer pad on each side of my front brakes. You may need to move the car around a little bit to be able to do this, so that the spokes are lined up so as to not block access to the pads.

There are a lot of different options out there for brake pads, but you should probably stick with reviewed and proven pads for the G35. Most of my friends have project Mu's on their Coupes (including one of them who is supercharged), and Hawk pads are also popular on our cars.

As far as determining if you have original pads on your car or not.... it probably doesn't really matter, as long as the pads that are on there work and the pads on there now are within the recommended wear allowance in terms of thickness. If you're just curious, you could always call or go down to Infiniti and see if they have any service records on the car from the previous owner by searching on the vehicles VIN # (assuming they brought the car to Infiiniti for service), or look around in the glove box for receipts of service from the original owner.