Brakes

P B,

When we lived on a station, on Diamantina River, a few years back, had 2 79 series ute's, a 105 wagon converted to dual cab, plus our own 80 series wagon.

The work vehicles averaged between 25 - 30K on a set of brake pads, depending who was driving :-). The 105 seemed to be harder on pads, but was often pretty heavy, loaded with motorbikes, avgas and bodies. When caught in muddy, slushy conditions, the 105 would chew rear pads out almost over 100 clicks or so.

If your ute is well loaded with camper & RTT, then the proportioning valve will be allowing more pressure to rear calipers = more wear. Dust and gritty road surfaces contribute to increased wear too.

We used to check pad wear every 5K.......fronts are easily visible, but rear need either wheel removal, or use torch and small mirror. The result if allowed to wear onto the discs, or worse, can be very expensive!!!

Bob

Ideas or help with what?
ABS? Pad thickness? Pad wear?

You should get more than that out of a set of pads under normal conditions, one killer of pads and rotors is mud and constant driving on dirt roads..... think of it as sand paper.

If you think of the pad having 8-10mm of material and you have worn 2 and a bit mm's of in 25 thou that's not bad going and pretty normal for a heavy vehicle but in your case getting to 3mm pad wear in 25 thou is a bit excessive and especial 5mm at the last service.

Most of the breaking comes from the front and the rears are trailing only, have you got a lift kit and is the load proportioning valve on the rear diff adjusted correctly.

Most factory pads wear very well.

Seems a tad early, however as a basis for comparison, we had the 40K service done at Kununurra on a recent trip up that neck of the woods and they replaced the rear pads on our VDJ79 as part of the capped price service.

PB,
I do find 25000K very early for the rears to have worn out even if you had the rear well loaded, I wonder if the brake proportioning valve is working correctly by sending to much braking to the rears.

As for the ABS, I think you are lucky that it had a problem as I hate the bloody things on dirt.

My brake service centre has a rolling road device that gives a computerised readout for the brakes on each individual wheel.
They added around 100mm. to the brake proportioning rod.
I now have good brakes both towing and loaded.

I have a 76 series that is 2.5 years old. It has done nearly 50000k and at last service it was only down 2 mm on rear pads. My driving is 80% city although I don't have ABS. My offroading is generally steep, dusty or muddy (at this time of year). When I traded my GU it was due for its first pad changes at 225000ks. I think the pads on that were diamond encrusted !! Sounds to me like the ABS /load could be over wearing your pads.

PB see you are in WA if you are around the Rockingham area can recommend ABR (Advanced Brake Remanufactures) in Port Kennedy the proprietor's name is Kelvin knows his stuff. Very satisfied with his work. You may want to consider the type of brake pad used not all are the same, and what the manufacturer is happy with might not be up to the task that you have set.

I expect the 3mm is the rears which often wear quicker than the fronts. The rears have a leading caliper which is more likely to cop mud and sand when offroading - especially if owners fit spacers to the rears, or with skinny wheels which have less coverage over the discs.