I went into the dealer today for a minor oil service and also stated my brakes were squeeling at low speeds. I later get a call from the service advisor that the rear pads had worn down to 5% remaining! The pad wear was even, rotors OK and the pressure to the caliper was normal.

My TCH has 21,000 miles and is driven 60/40 freeway/street. The advisor agreed the wear rate was higher that other TCHs they've serviced and will be calling the Toyota rep on Monday for their opinion.

Anyone else have high rear pad wear?

What sort of milage are you getting? If you are close to or above mid 30's I'd say there is a problem with the car.

If reasonably driven a TCH will last over 100k miles without a front, much less a rear brake job. In fact the rears would probably rust off first!

Under gentle braking, the TCH doesn't even apply the friction brakes until the speed drops below about 6 miles per hour. It uses regenerative braking to slow you down instead.

Yeah, something sounds like it must have been dragging. Hopefully they will replace them under warranty, as theres no way they should have worn out that fast.

Later!

Dang

Better check the park brake cables for hanging up!!!

TCH-43mpg
VW TDI--48
08 LS 600 HL-20
08 LX 470-16

I just had my 25,000 mile service and the service tech asked if I just had the brakes done... Turns out I have about 90% of the lining left on the front and rear pads.

So I would say, not 5% remaining on the rear pads is not normal. Are both sides (left side and right side of the car) worn down the same? If so, that would make me suspect a problem with either the ABS or some sensor controlling the rear brakes. Usually if a caliper sticks, only the right or left set of pads is affected, and the pads on that side normally don't wear evenly when the caliper sticks.

Does the emergency brake use the same friction material as the service brakes?

I thought the service brakes were disks in the rear with the emergency brakes being drum inside the disk hats.

You can see break pads without taking the tire off, have you ever looked at them yourself? It may require little bending to get the right angle and probably flashlight, not that I wouldn't trust the dealer but I would want to look at them myself, if it was my car. At 21k the wear is excessive but not impossible to get: Either you drive in a spirited way or something is dragging the breaks. Was the squeeling caused by the wear indicators? Regenerative breaking helps with pads wear but it has limited stopping capability and if you're hitting the breaks hard they will wear out almost as fast as in any other car. It would be very interesting to see how much front pads are worn out. If the fronts are above 60-70% then I would look for problem, if they're bellow 50 % I would look at the driving style.

Ag4ever, You are rite, my manuel shows separate shoes inside the drum which would eliminate the cables hanging.

TCH-43mpg
VW TDI--48
08 LS 600 HL-20
08 LX 470-16

The calipers on the TCH are single piston floating calipers. It sounds like your rear calipers floaters may have frozen up (rusted) and hung on you thereby causing them to drag. I'm not sure if the TCH uses them but on other mfgrs cars that have this tendancy now use a stainless steel glide that fits over the caliper mount and the caliper slides on this.

In almost 8k miles on my TCH I can still see the machining pattern on my rear rotors..

Regards - Randy




If there's one thing I've learned in online forums its this:
Never argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!

So does that mean it would be good maintenance to hit the brakes hard periodicly to keep them active and not rusting solid?