Official Now: My original rear OEM brake pads lasted 74, 500 miles. I bought new OEM pads, a brake

[AC_ML]

Official Now: My original rear OEM brake pads lasted 74,450 miles. I bought new OEM pads, a brake sensor, and lubricant and drove to a brake specialist to change it. My rear rotors are still in perfect shape.

I tell you..!! What a difference there is when braking my ML. I feel like I have BAS power brakes and can't press too hard on the brakes. Hopefully, they will stay like this for a long time. I have a heavy foot so I use the brakes a lot here in Houston.

It was so simple that next time, if I have the time, I will change it myself. It is always a lot easier once you have seen it at least once. You don't need to figure thins out i.e. best way to popup the pads, where some of the extra satellite hardware goes, and where to lubricate.

I drove 500+ miles after my brake light came on. I had around 0.5 mm left on a brake pad on the side opposite to the pair that has the brake sensor ( all the other pads had 1 mm left on them), so I recommend always trying to change your pads as soon as you can after the light comes on. The side without the brake sensor may be a little more work than the one with the brake sensors.

For comparison, I just changed, a couple of weeks ago, my front brake pads for the second time since I bought my ML from the dealer. My front rotors are still the original ones that came with the vehicle and are still in good shape.

It will be interesting to get the front and rear pad statistics, through a post, in which we can gather the minimum ever front and rear brake pad life, the average life, and the population of each of this extreme wear statistics (how many people had premature wear and how many have long lasting brake pads). I guess it will have to be per model: 320, 430, 500, and 55 since all of them seem to have different averages.

AC

[Wolfgang]

[smarten]

AC_ML - 2/7/2004 4:30 PM
It will be interesting to get the front and rear pad statistics, through a post, in which we can gather the minimum ever front and rear brake pad life, the average life, and the population of each of this extreme wear statistics (how many people had premature wear and how many have long lasting brake pads). I guess it will have to be per model: 320, 430, 500, and 55 since all of them seem to have different averages.

Interesting topic.

I have a 2000 320. The dealer told me the front brake light sensor was just about to come on at about 23K miles and so I changed pads.

At about 34K miles the dealer told me the rear brake light sensor was just about to come on. I was told I had about 1K miles of wear left.

It's now 45K miles and the rear brake light sensor has NOT come on. Also no front light sensor yet.

I think I'm just going to wait for the lights to come on before I do anything. Hopefully I'll get 75K miles on the rear brakes too!