I'm at 26K miles and would like to know when I should have the rear
pads/rotors checked. The front pads/rotors were done at 24K miles
and have been changed out. The car is a DD only. Thanks.

 

you should of had the rear brakes checked when you did the front brakes. I would say you should check them as soon as you can. cheap insurance to may sure brakes are up to par.

 

On a newer vette having traction control rear pads can and do wear out before the fronts. The computer working with the traction control will automatically apply the rear brakes to prevent tire spin. This is a good way to tell how hard a car is driven. I once turned down a C4 Z07 for having fried rear brakes and good front brakes among other things.

 

Interesting. I thought the fronts wore out much sooner because the
majority of a car's stopping power is derived from the front brakes.
That's why I didn't bother checking the rear when I switched out the
front. Even the dealer tech didn't think I needed to check them. Go
figure...

 

You and the tech are correct. The front brakes do 80% of the work, so the rears will last twice as long. I'm really surprised you changed the front rotors at such a low mileage. They can always be machined a few times before they are too thin. Traction control pulls spark and cuts power to aid traction, the brakes are not used, but the active handling will apply the rear brakes to straighten the car out. So, unless you are sideways around every corner everyday and the AH is kicking in, you aren't going to see excessive wear of the rear brakes.

The brakes aren't going to suddenly fail. You will be alerted by the audible wear indicator when the pads are worn and will still have a number of miles before they have to be serviced, that is, you don't have pull over and have the car towed, you can often go hundreds of miles depending on how and where you drive.

 

Oh, and a pre-emptive statement, sometimes it may be confusing about the traction control and braking because the TC uses the ABS sensors to detect wheel spin, just as they detect wheel lockup.

And I did a quick Google and did see that I was wrong about spark being pulled, since the Corvette has thorttle by wire it actually pulls the throttle back. Other less-sophisticated cars pull spark to cut power.

 

Hi 04msmZ06 -

I have a 2002 that I bought new-

I drive it moderately hard - not too terribly hard on the brakes.

The car has 42k miles on it, and the brakes are still not needing replaced.

I cehck the regularly (I have a lift so I get to look at it frequently).

I am starting to feel a slight pulsation in the pedal (warped rotors) so the rotors may actually be the trigger for me.

best regards -

mqqn

 

mqqn - Keep in mind that slight warping can be cured with machining/turning the rotors. I had an Audi Quattro years ago that suffered from pulsating rotors and I was told it was from parking the car with the brakes hot (I autocrossed it) and the part of the rotor inside the caliper cooled at a different rate than the part that was exposed to cooler air and caused them to have a "bump" on the front rotors. Turning the rotors cured the problem.

 

Thanks for the reply. The tech said I didn't need to check the rears,
but then after checking the fronts he said they were worn too thin to
be machined. I didn't believe it, but since I've never worked on brakes
I wasn't going to be able to say otherwise. So, they still got the
extra money out of me. Seems like they always do...

 

You can get good quality rotors for about $16 each at Rockauto.com. I race on them. It makes no economic sense to turn rotors. Labor cost would exceed cost of new.

Here is a link to Stoptech. It's white paper written by Carroll Smith about the Myth of Warped Rotors.

http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp...rakedisk.shtml

 

Totally agree. I never ever cut rotors. Just means you are that much more likely to warp them sooner the next time. I'm lazy. Once I am doing the job, I'd rather just chuck the old rotors and put on new ones.

 

Wow, that's really surprising. I haven't owned a car long enough for many years to have to replace or even turn a rotor (I change cars pretty often) so that surprises me. Years ago I think my old Audi rotors were close to $50 each. So, you're right, going with a fresh rotor at a price like that makes sense.

 

Hi KurtinKC -

I want to get some slotted nickel plated rotors - so when they need attention, the cheap stockers will be history.

Thanks for the info -

best regards -

mqqn

 

This is wrong!!! Traction control on the C5 will apply the rear brakes, cut engine power or do both depending on speed and road conditions. At lower speeds rear wheel spin is better corrected with brake control and higher speeds it is better corrected with engine control since that reacts faster. You can see brake TC work in a simple test. Swap the front and rear wheels, go to a steep hill and put the car in nuetral and let it coast down the hill. The TC will think the rear wheels are spinning and apply the brakes thus slowing the car.

Active Handling will apply the brake on any of the 4 wheels depending on whether a car is understeering or oversteering. Oversteer is corrected by applying the outside front brake while understeer is corrected by applying the inside rear brake.

That is why a lot of track drivers see increased wear on their rear pads since the system spends a lot of time correcting understeer because they are overdriving the car.

The comment above about hanging the car sidways around every corner would increase front brake wear if the car is moving at high speeds. At low speeds AH has a wider dead band where it will not interfere with car yaw rate so you have to hang the back way out before it will intervene.

Reference: Chevrolet C5 Corvette Vehicle Dynamic Control System by D. Hoffman and M. Rizzo an SAE Paper presented in 1998.

Bill