bobincm

I took the car in for service. It has 22,000 miles on it and the dealer says that I need new brakes. Is this normal?

teamplayer

iTrader: (2)

It all depends on your driving habits and/or conditions.

If you do alot of town driving as opposed to freeway driving your brakes will wear out faster. If you drive up and down hills alot, your brakes can wear quicker than normal.

As a technician at a Toyota dealership, I can tell you from experience. I've seen brakes last well over 90k miles and I've replace brakes at 7k miles. It all depends. Best way is check the brake pad thickness for yourself. The service manuals will tell you minimum brake pad thickeness is 1mm but I'd recommend replacement at 2mm (to be on the safe side).

airtime

Sidenote Teamplayer, which model of Toyota has the same oil filter on our LS430? I'm thinking of bringing my car to the Toyota dealer for an oil change instead of Lexus as they charge half the cost. Just wanted to make sure they stock the correct filter. thanks.

teamplayer

iTrader: (2)

Lexus and Toyota's use the same type of filters. Your Toyota dealership service can Lexus as well?

It's the larger filter. Lemme get you a Toyota part number for the filter. Give me a sec...

teamplayer

iTrader: (2)

Check your pm airtime.

juniorEXE

the lexus knows and will tell you when it is time to replace the brake pads.





(there is a sensor on the front and rear pads )

Russ G

I may be wrong, but I thought that once you got to the sensor, the sensor needs to be replaced, which adds to the cost.

Frank T

Once the sensors come on they are Toast and need to be replaced. The sensors start to wear with about 40% of the pads remaining. I pulled my sensors out of my pads and zip-tied them out of the way. I'm still on my original pads at 56,000 + miles and will easily get another 10,000 miles before they need changing. BTW LS front and rear pads should wear virtually the same, (mine do) so if the dealer is telling you the front pads need replacing either the rears do too or there is something wrong that is causing uneven brake wear.

IMHO Lexus dealers end up changing brake pads WAY to early because of the way the sensors are designed. My dealer started calling me about doing brakes when I still had 50% of the pads remaining. It's a real Profit Maker for the dealers though.

Frank