Hypermiling and brake wear (or lack thereof)
 

I started hypermiling my 2008 Kia Rondo three months ago, and I really like the 25% boost in fuel economy. Coasting to lights and keeping speed down on rural roads / highways has really helped.

One thing I noticed real quick is that I use my brakes MUCH less than I did prior to hypermiling. I'm curious--what's the going rate among you hypermilers out there in terms of brake life, either in wear or miles between replacement?

MY rebuilt VX had 0ver 50% front pads left at 65k miles. Thinking about it, I don't remember replacing front pads in a very long time but I typically don't keep cars until they fall apart. I did replace them in my Suzuki GZ 250 but it was probably used as a training bike for the first couple k miles.

regards
mech

big problem for me
 

Rusty brake rotors have been a recurring problem for me. My Firefly (Metro) is on its 3rd set of rotors, with ~37k km / 23k miles on the clock.

It's a combination of two things: (1) very light brake use, plus (2) low distance driven per year. The car regularly sits for a week or 2 between drives, and then when I do drive it, I may not use the brakes aggressively enough to shine up the braking surface again. Once the corrosion gets past a certain point, the pads won't clean it off.

The solution for this situation is to keep an eye on the rotor surface and remember to do some intentionally harder brake applications once in a while to keep the rotors from becoming a problem.

Also the car is parked outside for half the year, which doesn't help (rotors more exposed to the weather).

The brake pads/shoes, on the other hand, will probably last the life of the car!

(Rusty rotors are possibly even a bigger problem on my winter beater 2004 Prius because now most of my already typically "light" braking is of the regenerative kind, so there's even less friction braking compared to the Firefly.)

My brake pads were about 50% at 90,000 miles. But I make 3 downhill stops each day, plus one downhill 55 MPH to 30 MPH hard deceleration every week.

No rust, though.

I normally get 150,000 miles on my front brakes and over 300,000 miles on my rear brakes.

All the brake parts on my '94 are OEM except for the hard lines which rust away from the outside in, thank you very much salt trucks! :mad:

Lessee, the last time I did brakes on the truck was...hmm.

2010? 2008? Around there. Did it myself. Didn't touch the rears, they're fine.

Think "every time you brake, it's a mistake". I read somewhere about over 100 k miles on OE Prius tires.

regards
mech

my front brake pad were used at 50% after 25k miles of normal driving and 55k miles of hypermiled driving.

I've only replaced the front brakes on the ZX2 once in the 83,500 miles I have driven it. That is only due to not be a hypermiler for the first 25,000 miles of driving, and the front brakes were ~30-40% when I got the car.

They were replaced around 55,000 miles ago and still look new. The rears will be replaced soon as they probably have over 100,000 miles on them and sound bad when I have to brake hard.