uwti

Got an 02 turbo with 13K miles on it. Took the front wheels off to inspect the rotors/pads and found that the outer pad is much more warn than the inner pad, outer pad is probably 60% the thickness of the inner pad. Is this normal?

dotframe

When i changed pads on the C4S I noticed that the outer pads on the front were worn a bit more but only by a mm or two.

Macster

Haven't had to do brakes on my 03 Turbo yet and it is coming up on 100K miles so any pad wear is not something I'm familiar with with my Turbo.

My Boxster has shown a bit of a tendency -- not every time, in fact only once -- for uneven pad wear not so much inner vs. outer but one of the 4 front pads was not worn nearly as much as the other 3 pads.

I can think of only one reason in my car's case and that is the brakes become quite dirty and where this matters most is the rubber piston covers.

This dust (iron/pad dust mostly) is heavy and can build up and interfere some with the natural tendency of the pistons to retract slightly and thus pull the pads away from the rotors a fraction of an inch.

If the pads remain in contact they can run hotter and when the brakes are used the dragging pads will get hotter and wear faster.

What I do is once in a while I wash the brake hardware at the car wash with the wand to wash then rinse the brake dust away. The water runs black for a moment as I do this.

(When I do the the brakes as like I have done with my Boxster I'll use a spray can (one per wheel) and thoroughly clean the brake hardware before I disassemble the brakes. This removes the build up of dust and makes working on the brakes a less messy -- not by much though -- job.)

In your car's case I would have to believe the brakes have never been cleaned. The dust build up -- despite the low miles -- could be a factor. Helped possibly by the fact the car was probably washed a great deal and the brakes rusted up some and the rust was scraped off as the brakes were used and contributed to the build up. (When I got my Turbo with 10K miles on it the brake disc holes were almost blocked/plugged up with what I suspect was mostly brake rust dust as the stuff in the holes had a reddish tinge to it.)

Also, in your car's case it would not surprise me to learn the brakes have never had a proper brake fluid flush and bleed and if this the case this can result in one or more pistons to move less freely and with the same result, accelerated and uneven brake pad wear.

Sincerely,

Macster.