Brake Pad Wear
 

This is my first 4WD. (2008 X5 3.0si). I have always owned rear wheel drive vehicles otherwise.

Now, every car I've owned it is always the front brake pads which wear out first.

In my X5 the condition based service since day 1 was also telling me this (front pads wearing quicker). However in the last 2 weeks the numbers have jumped dramatically.

It is now telling me
front - 70,000km
rear - 45,000km.

(I have 39000km on the clock)

Having never owned a 4wd before is this normal? ie are the rear pads supposed to be wearing out quicker then the fronts?

wow... thats weird, you think it would be the other way around.

Not too weird. I've seen the same thing happen in other cars I've had over the years. Cars like these have a feature of the braking system that purposely tries to apply more brake pressure to the rear wheels primarily to avoid nose-diving. A side effect of this is the rears going first.

Where are you getting the brake life #'s from?

It's in a menu under car info in idrive

I checked mine today... and it's the same thing, rear pads say 19000mi. while fronts say 25000mi. I only have 9k mileage on mine.

My service information shows a similar situation. I too am used to the front going first as it did on the E53 I had.

my first question would be...... is this a 3.0 only issue?


while i do not have an explanation i can offer this, my Corvette would wear out a set of rear pads at the track if I left the car in normal traction control mode. the traction control would apply the rear brakes at the slightest twitch of the rear end.

is it possible that with the lighter front end of the 3.0 version the rear is stepping out slightly causing traction control to apply the rear brakes?

for a point of reference, my 08 4.8 has gone thru one set of front rotors and pads in under 35k miles while my idrive says my rear pads are good for another 15k miles.

I forgot to add my driving style is largely sedate.

It is my daily driver, covering 95% motorway, very little start stop traffic ( I only have one traffic light between home and work!) I do not drive aggressively, do not brake aggressivley and tend to ease off gas pedal from afar instead of waiting last minute and braking hard.

The milder you brake, the less weight transfer to the front of the vehicle, and the less difference between front and rear pad wear.

And for various reasons, if the designers know that the rear pads have an easier job, they may design then differently such that they wear faster, e.g., lower surface area/braking surface and/or thickness.

It would be interesting to compare the front and rear pads.