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Have you replaced your Volt's brake pads due to wear?

  • I have never replaced my Volt's brake pads due to wear.

    Votes: 94 96.9%
  • I have had to replace my Volt's brake pads due to wear.

    Votes: 3 3.1%
21 - 40 of 56 Posts
I have a 2002 Chevy Avalanche with 130,000 miles. My rear pads needed to be replace at 70,000, but my front are still original. They were checked last week when I had new tires installed, and they are still have 50% pad left.
If this is indeed the case, then you need to find out why your front brakes are not doing more of the braking. May need to look at proportioning valve. Proportioning valve should be sending about 60% of the braking forces to the front axle. In a real panic stop situation lack of braking power to the steer axle could result in a catastrophe easily avoided with properly working brake system.
 
If this is indeed the case, then you need to find out why your front brakes are not doing more of the braking. May need to look at proportioning valve. Proportioning valve should be sending about 60% of the braking forces to the front axle. In a real panic stop situation lack of braking power to the steer axle could result in a catastrophe easily avoided with properly working brake system.
Regen is on the front axle.
During normal braking that's firm enough to blend in brakes, rear brakes will wear more than front as they need to balance it out.
In a panic stop with full friction brakes, the 'smart brakes' should be applying appropriate braking levels. It's not a simple dumb system that can only apply brakes in one way.
 
If this is indeed the case, then you need to find out why your front brakes are not doing more of the braking. May need to look at proportioning valve. Proportioning valve should be sending about 60% of the braking forces to the front axle. In a real panic stop situation lack of braking power to the steer axle could result in a catastrophe easily avoided with properly working brake system.
Front pads and rotors are larger than rear to account for weight transfer under moderate to heavy braking. If you were to always brake extremely lightly, the front and rear brakes would see similar usage and there smaller rear pads would wear out first. This is actually pretty common in sports car that are driven gently, as the rear brakes are significantly smaller than the front's. It is not necessarily indicative of an issue with the braking system.

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Hello 70 to a hundred thousand miles on aICE vehicle is inconceivable to me. Well I guess anything's possible.
I was quite pleased when I got 45000 on a 2013 volt and no brakes needed. I saw the brakes because I bought new tires before handing the car in and they still look good.
 
Discussion starter · #30 ·
I am planning on swapping out the rear pads in the next week or two.

Not because of wear, but because the discs are rusting up through lack of use.
Seems like you should just clean/resurface the rotors. I guess, if you're at it, you might as well replace the pads. That still wouldn't apply to this poll, which is specifically asking about pads replaced due to wear.
 
I've only got 1000 miles on the Volt so there's no issue there, but my C-Max Energi had over 40,000 miles and the pads looked almost new. Also, one of my Priuses had 105,000 miles on the original pads when I sold it, and they still had a lot of wear left in them.
 
I was speaking with a friend the other day about brake wear in EVs. This was prompted by his reading an article that stated that brake dust is the primary harmful pollutant that cars put out. The article then went on to claim that EVs actually produce more brake dust than their ICEV counterparts.

We all know this is erroneous because EVs use their brakes far less frequently and intensely than ICEVs. But when I offered up as an example that I had never heard of a single Volt owner who has replaced brake pads due to wear, it got me thinking, how many of us actually have? I'm not going to include this in the poll, but feel free to comment on your total mileage and your mileage when you replaced your pads (if ever).
Journalistic hogwash not worthy of my time :)
 
My VW Passat 4-Motion, with upgraded Koni DFS dampers, never had to change the front pads. After 190,000km and over 16 years I changed the rears once, granted I was probably getting close to changing the rears again when trading it in for the Volt. I used the tiptronic downshifted a lot.

My GF's 12 year old Subaru Impreza also hasn't needed fronts. The 4 corner struts on it are real firm!

My theory is that cars with firmer suspensions, less nose dive, are less likely to wear the front pads. The lower weight transfer to the front may play a big part in that.
 
Almost 60k on my Volt and pads are near-new looking. My wife's Camry Hybrid is at 105k now and front pads still look at about 80%. I did have to change rear pads on it as one side developed a stuck caliper and wore that side. We had a Saturn L sedan that always went 100k on front pads. It was a manual and we live in the country, and my wife is apparently easy on brakes. Sold that car to my neighbor with 280k on it and rear pads were original! I think the calipers may have been stuck a bit though.....
 

but I've never had such clean brakes and rotors before. Anyone driving a BMW knows how dusty those brakes get.
Ain't it the truth! German cars seem to be the worst until you get rid of the factory pads. My Z4 has "starburst" alloys and I spend 45 minutes a week trying to clean all the nooks and crannies. The AMG wheels are easier to clean, but get just as dirty. Never have to worry about the Volt though.
 
I've never had to replace brake pads on any of my ICE vehicles either. I have put 140,000-175,000 miles on several without ever needing new pads. Maybe it's just the way I drive, but I highly doubt my Volt will ever need any either, as the brakes are used even less.
Dude, yer in Arizona for crying out loud. Try driving in West Virginia some time <grin>.
 
The recent discussions have not been about brake dust from EVs, but from tire dust. It is very interesting actually. The particulate emissions from an EV's tires are much higher than the particulate emissions from a VW diesel. That's not to say that diesel doesn't also have tire dust, together with more brake dust, but it is an interesting comparison between tire emissions and engine emissions.

Go take a look at the data.
 
Actually, that will put literally no wear on the brakes....
The main problems are with the automatic transmissions and engine creep in ICEVs. Most drivers with manual transmissions learn how to use the hand brake when stopped so they can rest both feet (clutch and accelerator). Automatic vehicle drivers don't do that, so they tend keep the transmission in "D" (drive) and ride their brakes with the right foot because of the engine creep.
 
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