Cinica -

I think they are definitely BSing you about the % worn on your pads. I own a lot of vehicles for my business and NEVER are the rear almost worn as much as the front. I have never had to change the fronts and backs at the same time unless it was the 2nd time i was getting my fronts done. So they are definitely taking you for a ride with that.

Booz -

I am not knowledgeable working with vehicles but i can change my own brakes. One thing i will never pay for again by a service station are brake changes (pads). You can change your pads on most vehicles in less than 5 minutes after your wheel is off. So never pay retail for the pads from a dealer. It's like a 300% markup and they inflate the labor time. It sounds like you know some people so you should just buy them and have a friend help you put them on. I have changed disc brakes on cars in less than an hour with a regular jack, C-clamp, and screwdriver and like i said, not extremely mechanically knowledgeable. Good luck.

 

Rear pads on my '05 after 8000kms.





Front pads are fine. No, e-brake wasn't on.

 

Now that's weird and your saying you weren't drifting or using the E brake at all ?


Kel, Is this winner infinti telling you this? I'm assuming it is since that's the closes one to ya...... That's the type of reason why I never take any of my cars to the dealer for anything cause there alway's trying to find a way to suck some more money outta you cause the tech gets paid through labor. I'd rather take the money to buy a Helm's manual than pay some of them newly ASE wanna be techs to work on my car.
See if they can pull the wheel's off and show you that the pads are worn and if they are buy the pads and slap them on yourself.
I hate paying for labor .

 

I'd much rather set myself on fire and then try to put it out with icepicks than drift. The rear pads just disintegrated at high temps on track. I checked my pads in the morning and they were practically new. I figured the fronts did most of the braking so I replaced the fronts with a higher temp pad but I was terribly mistaken. Packed a set of spare fronts with me but no rears. I lost a day of tracktime because of it.

 

my rears went way before my fronts. its over-active VDC. Ebrake is a drum, not related.

 

I say go buy the pads and take the rotors to a Kragen Auto parts store to get them resurfaced. Most large auto parts stores have a brake lathe and its less than $20 to resuface two rotors. A Brake Job shouldnt be more than 100 bucks for parts. I used to do brake jobs for friends with a crappy jack parked on the side of the street when I was in college. And it still took less than 30 minutes.

I plan to just replace my own pads when needed, and once I need to replace the rotors, its on to a Brembo Gran Turismo kit for my 05 6MT.

Good luck.

 

I also asked the dealer regarding my 04 G with Brembos. They said that for Brembos, the pads will be covered by the warranty for 36,000 miles and the rotors will be 40,000 miles for the standard warranty period if you purchase or lease the car.

 

I have an '03 with a good bit (56K miles) on it so I'll share my Brembo experience.
Your rotors should be fine and not even need to be turned at 17K. When I sold my Brembos for a BBK (at about 54K miles) I had Infiniti measure the rotor thickness and I still had half the life of the rotor left.
Your brake pads might need to be replaced. Mine needed to be changed at 30K miles. If that's the case, I would buy some Hawk HPS pads from TireRack. The pads are easy to change.

 

i am just shy of 30k miles on my 04 6MT and hearing the same thing from 2 dealers in the last week - i need all pads replaced and front rotors. car had 17 k miles when i bought it, and the miles i've put on are almost all highway miles. sooo...

anyone know what the min mm should be on the brembos?

 

I had the brakes replaced on M3 after 30K miles and BMW didn't charge me for the service. The brakes on my wife's Audi were also replaced under warranty. BMW and Audi cover everything under their 4 yr/50K warranty.

 

What the hell is going on here? since when mileage plays a major role in deciding the life expectancy of brake pads? you can drive 3 years and do ~45,000 miles on the original brakes (and even more) or alternately, you can take it to track and practically execute them to death in little under 45 minutes....

There is something called highway driving and then there is something called city driving (duh). And in addition to that, there is also something called driving habits - some people rev-match and down shift to assist in braking (like myself), others just ride on their brakes going 60 mph downhill till they get to a complete stop.

Bottom line is - your mileage plays a minimal role in your brakes life expectancy. It's more about driving conditions and driving habits.

 

Never trust your service advisor!! Actually, never trust the service dept. in general for they are all retards. Seriously, I've never had a good experience with them yet.
They still haven't fixed my rear axle clicking. It's been almost a year and they still insist that the "rear axle fix kit" is on back order.

Way back, a couple months after I purchased my car, I bought it to service for the brembos making noise and all they did was resurface my rotors which reduced their life ten fold. Now I need new roters.

They also tried to tell me I needed a new clutch.... so I told them to fix it under warrenty because there's no way they cluch could be bad so soon. I counldn't beleive what the service advisor said to me next. He said, "Honestly speaking ,son, as a dad of 2 teenagers, I'm going to ask you this question as I would my sons... are you droping the clutch and flooring it? You know... spinning the wheels?" I was like, "what the hell does that mean??" Then he said nevermind. What an ***...

So long story short.. there really isn't anything wrong with my clutch. It was just the new service guy telling him that it needed to be replaced not knowing that the '03 and '04 6MT have a high clutch engagement point which was changed in '05. '05 6MT clutches feels completely different. If you don't beleive me and you have an '03 or '04 6MT, go find someone with a '05 and drive it then you'll know what I'm talking about.

So, all I'm saying is I've never had a good experience with service depts...

Hope you guys have better luck than me because I sure don't.

 

The route I am taking instead of replacing my pads with the stock ones is buying a set of HAWK HPS Brake Pads . They have less brake dust to deal with and they work better than the stock ones. You can call the parts department and ask how much the stock pads are if he didn't give you the price of the pads over the phone. The Hawk pads are 95.00 plus the back ones are 67.00. If you are changing pads to a different brand on the front you might want to do the back the same way.

At this point if you are doing your brake pads you might wanna consider putting slotted or cross drilled rotors on since the brakes are taken apart. But that is going to add another 500 to 600 to the bill. You can just replace the pads and have the rotors refinished (turned) using the nicer Hawk pads.

I got all mine from mynismo.com rotors + Hawk pads for 762 shipped. Then gotta pay to have them installed.

If your brakes are not squeaking or grinding when you come to a stop you might be able to wait a couple of oil changes before replacing to save up some extra cash.

Sadly you are right about the girl thing sometimes car places can be jerks cause you are a girl. My gf had the same problem when she was buying her BMW the dealer told her to get her dad and come back.

EDIT: If your brakes are grinding or squeaking go have them checked don't keep driving the car. Then you will have to replace the rotors for sure and that will be an ugly bill.

 

Did she spit on them? I would have.

 

Hehe no but I honestly have never seen her more pissed. Just happy it was not me. She came home called BMW of America and she got all kinds of cool stuff. Free Oil changes for life, polo shirts, a jacket. She bought the car from another dealer.