cooling the front brakes

[NeilBlanchard]

The main way to avoid brake heating, is to use the engine to slow down the car. This shuts off the fuel supply altogether and avoids heating the brakes; which is as close to regen as we will get with an ICE.

I like to think about keeping the brakes cool in terms of ecodriving and using *just* *enough* throttle to get the job done. Any heat in the brakes = too much throttle. Well, in a general sense anyway -- obviously ya' gotta' use the brakes as you come to a stop, and/or to slow the car on really steep grades and/or in emergencies.

[user removed]

I've found that since I seriously started paying attention to driving for mileage that my brake wear has dropped 50%. I replaced the front pads on my CVT Insight soon after I bought it with 35k miles. When I sold it with close to 30k more miles the brake wear was less than 20% of expected pad life. The average mileage went from 43 for the previous owner to 62 for me in the last 30k. That's the effect of driving to conserve inertai.

Its did not mean slower average speeds. My average speeds have consistently been about 38 MPH, over many tens of thousands of miles over the last decade. I could do a lot better if I wanted to drop that average speed by 25-50% but if I was going to go that slow, why burn any liquid fuel in the first place?

regards
Mech