Just had the brakes changed on the BMW 3 series...thoughts?

Brake wear has more to do with who's driving than anything. Some people are harder on their brakes than others. City driving will be harder than suburban driving as its more stop and go. I'd say lay off the throttle and ease on the brakes, don't jump on them if you want them to last longer. Twenty four thousand miles is a short time to go through pads and rotors.

 

Is it a BMW thing?
Volvos need brakes+rotors replaced at the same time, at least that's what the dealer says... brake service is around $450-500 for a set.

But 24k mi, seems a bit early to change the brakes and rotors??
How is it under warranty?

 

Mine were done at 20K miles on an '02 325 coupe. They also shed an incredible amount of dust, so I wasn't surprised.

Be glad it was under warranty. The bill for my front rotors/pads would have been $600+.

 

Its normal.

BMW's eat brakes (pads and rotors). The rotors are relatively thin from the factory, and the pads are quite aggressive - they eat into the rotors a fair amount. If you ever noticed, BMW's brakes are awesome. You hardly need to touch the pedal and the car stops very quick. They offer tons of grip, great fade characteristics, and so on. But the price you pay for this is in brake wear.

The good news is that OEM replacement parts are ridiculously overpriced at the dealer. I did the brakes in my '02 E46 at 25k miles. I just did them again as I approach 50k miles. You can get Brembo rotors, wear sensors and OEM pads for around $270 or so, if you're willing to put them in yourself.

 

You got me worried there for a minute. It's actually 4 years/50k miles ... http://www.bmwusa.com

 

My mercedes needs pads and rotors at the same time too.

If you want to do it yourself check thepartsbin.com I've bought OEM MB parts from there for low prices.

 

It is correct that BMW rotors are fairly thin from the factory. As long as the warranty is still in effect for replacement let them replace everything. After the warranty runs out you can decide if you want to attempt one cut on the rotors before replacement. I would not suggest attempting more than one as it will affect the cooling of the brakes.

BMW OEM pads do shed a lot of dust because they are aggressive and are softer compound than some of the pads that compromise on the dust thing by being harder compounds. But, the harder compounds are not as good with braking effectiveness as the soft ones. I would opt for the softer ones every time.

I normally replace them myself. It is not that hard and even replacing the rotors are easy if you have the time, tools and a place. Auto Zone has replacement rotors that you can purchase a lifetime replacement warranty on. I even get my pads replaced free because I bought the higher cost replacement ones.

 

I don't have much bmw experience but with benzes you generally change pads once and then you do the rotors too. Cutting them doesn't seem to work. The thinner rotors after a cut seem to want to warp pretty quickly. I have a set of rear rotors in my garage that I had cut years ago but have never installed. I kindof keep them around as a spare set in case I need some really bad and can't wait for shipping a new set.

The new rotors on the older benzes aren't very expensive.

Tom W

 

I'm a factory-trained BMW & MINI tech, and can tell you this is accurate. The discs and pads are very effective, at the tradeoff of higher wear. You only need a soft touch on brake pedal of the recent BMW's...

BTW, when doing the brakes yourself, remember to apply some copper grease (which comes with the factory pads) to the rear of the pads where they slide against the caliper, and on the ends of the anti-vibration clip.

 

we have an 2003 bmw 325i and we have put 60k miles on the original rotors and still going and I bought high friction pads for her car too and the rotors are still just fine were on the 3rd set of pads and the rotors are still clean no big grooves and no warping ie no need to turn them. if you replaced the pads before they gouged the rotors the rotors should have been just fine sounds sort of scamish to me.

we drive her car very very hard im teaching her heel/toe and such so we constantly brake at the limit and she and I are farily aggressive behind the wheel you definitly should not have fragged a set of rotors at 24k miles maybe a caliper guide is sticking or you had some sort of freak pad failure but it dosent sound like it sounds like it was normal wear and you got the pads replaced right after you got the warning.

the simlple answer is the rotors should be fine. prior to the brake job did you have any pedal modulation under braking ? (that means warped rotors) which depending on severity is not really neccesary to replace badly warped do need to be addressed, otherwise unless you heard grinding and saw metal shavings on the wheel at 24k miles your rotors should have been fine. when you get the brake wear sensor light you still have a few thousand miles of pad life left and as long as you replace the brakes promptly there is no rotor damage.

I have a mercedes that I take to the track with 138,000 miles on it and im using my stock rotors they are very similar rotors i expect the bmw rotors to last to 100k miles.

 

i should probly mention we use ebc redstuff which are carbon ceramic pads they have a higher friction rating than the stock bmw pads at something like .56 the stock pads are around .46 also you can heat the brakes up farily good we run motul 600f fluid to prevent any boiling and brake loss under emergency heavy brake use.

everything everyone is saying is true if the rotors get too thin they will get hot but they should warp a little first then you feel your pedal shudder a bit under heavy braking thats usually when id recomend a change, youll know if heat is a problem if you go out to a safe place and do 3 back to back stops say 50mph to 0 if you can do that with no fade id say the rotors are fine but I am sure others might disagree with my methods.

also brake fade comes from several different types of problems there is pad fade, and the fade from boiling fluid in a caliper etc.. you dont ever get your brakes hot enough ever (trust me you dont unless your tracking the car ) for the thickness after 24k miles to be an issue. at the track i can smell my brakes burning on every lap that is proper brake operating tempurature in 99.9 % of street driving you'll never hit temps high enough to be an issue and cause caliper damage or other problems.

 

In my experience, most rotors are now pretty thin from the factory across all brands. In the name of weight and cost savings, they are now a wear item. The days of getting rotors turned and using them over 2-3 pad changes are over, fortunately, the cost has come down quite a bit. I bought new rotors for our minivan for $38 each, for NAPA "premium" U.S. cast rotors. That's not too much more than the brake pads were ($65 for a set of 4).

 

Yea.......... BMW will want to replace the rotors with the pads. Last set I did (when I had my Z3 last year), I just used OEM Brembo's from TireRack, then got Porterfield R4S pads. Loved the combination, not to mention the dusting cut by WELL over 50%. (if not more)

The Porterfields are 2x what you might normally pay for, but are very low dust, good for semi-agressive driving, yet will not eat your rotors alive.

 

i run the porterfield r4s pads on my mercedes they are like 200 bucks a pair though , the ebc redstuff is i think 70 a pair and still notably better than stock if you have the cash id spring for the porterfields though youll get whiplash on the track i go up to porterfield r4 pads they are really great but need to be hot so they cannot be used on the street.

 

Dude, I got a headache reading this! Punctuation please...