Brake pad mileage?

[overthehill]

Hi,

I have an '89 that I bought new. It has 175K miles on it now. I still have the original brakes on the front and they still have about 1/4th of the pads remaining. Is this unusual? I have never gotten this many miles out of a set of brakes.

 

[SHOdded]

You must be a true hypermiler! I have heard people getting 50K out of the OEM pads, but never 175K (especially on a Ford!). My guess is, similar to the headlights discussion, you got one of the ones with the best materials before they figured out where to "cut costs". Either that, or the car is driven mainly on a dyno

 

[overthehill]

You must be a true hypermiler! I have heard people getting 50K out of the OEM pads, but never 175K (especially on a Ford!). My guess is, similar to the headlights discussion, you got one of the ones with the best materials before they figured out where to "cut costs". Either that, or the car is driven mainly on a dyno

I really don't see how these brakes have lasted as long as they have. I will admit that a fair amount of the miles were highway miles but still. I did have to replace the rear brakes at 165K due to the left caliper sticking and wearing out the pads on that side.

 

[EL SHO]

could it be that the front discs are the ones being slowly wearing out instead of the pads?

 

[TimboSHO]

Yes, that is pretty unusual. I have seen brakes last over 200k with all highway miles, but usually not on a car that old. How many times have you put a clutch in it?