Lexus: Estimated life of brakes and other components

Pads and rotors last less than 25,000 miles on the ES300. I guess that is about
the same on an LS. And that is only if the ES is driven by a little old lady on
her way to church and her womens clubs and to the beauty parlor and grocery
store. Lord only Knows what the life would be if a real serious driver drove
one.

MCBRUE wrote: 

There is no kilometer limit in the break system. Usually it
is the amount and type of braking than breaks the break system.
 

This old lady is most likely continuously pressing the break
pedal and heating up the breaks. Do not drag the breaks, or
the break system will be too hot, and pad material will be
deposited on rotors.
 

Street pads have a low functional temperature range. If you get
them too hot, break pad material will be deposited on the surface
of the rotors. Because of this, rotors will appear warped.
If you get a set of race pads, your car will not stop at all if
the breaks are cold. Even if you know this and could preheat
the breaks or apply the immensive amount of pressure that cold
breaks need, your wife or someone else would be in big trouble
with the car. This is why race pads are no good in normal
traffic. Accidents are more costly than break system repairs
due to missuse, thus all the sensible manufactures use street
pads in normal cars.

Once there is a thin layer of deposited pad material on the
rotors, the rotors will have a worse thermal transfers
characteristics in that area. This means, that once you have
overheated the pads for some times, you have started the thermal
spiral, where it is always a bit easier to get the pads
overheated.

Because there is no miracle cure available, you should learn
to drive in a way that heats the pads less. Usually, that
should also give a lower fuel consumption. I remember once
driving an trip of 170 km between two cities without breaking
at all before reaching destination. Of course, that is not
usually possible, but accelerating wildly and then breaking
vigoriously at every stop light will destroy a properly designed
break system in any modern street car. Pads will mell and rotors
will appear "warped" due to pad material deposits on the rotors.

Get your acceleration and deceleration experiences in a theme
park (or on a race track with a car with race pads) and drive
more sensibly in the normal traffic and your break system will
last longer. You still need to replace pads every now and then,
but rotors are something you destroy by missuse.

Please, check out this site about break systems:
http://www.stoptech.com/whitepapers/warped_rotors_myth.htm

MCBRUE wrote: 

You're kidding I hope.
On my 95 Mercury Grand Marquis, I changed the front pads for the 1st time at
60K. The front rotors at 75K. The 2nd time i replaced the front pads was
at 115K The rear pads I just changed at 165K. Rear rotors are still good.

On my daughter's 91 Camry I just replaced the front pads at 100K. Rotors are
fine. Rears are too.

On my 2001 Tacoma with 40K I haven't changed anything yet.

I would think the ES would be on par with the Camry.

And here I was thinking about buying an ES soon...

I have a 98 GS 400 with 55K miles on the original brakes. Plenty of pad
left!
"Top Spin" <com> wrote in message
news:com... 

I suspect you are talking about city driving. It is not unusual for a
properly driven car that drives mainly on the highway to get significantly
higher mileage before brake and rotor work are necessary.


"Top Spin" <com> wrote in message
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