Based on people's experience, how much pads life do I have (in miles) before I get the warning light.

I'm trying to pre-empt changing these pads (and rotors) rather than having to change them when they are really low. Also the British pound has been amazingly low making buying car parts etc. from the UK making a lot of sense right now.

 

If the back side looks like that also, thousands of miles. Driven normally, well as normal as you can. Mine had about the same left on them 6000 miles ago. They way they are wearing, it may be 5-600 more before I change.

 

How long is a piece of string?

 

The answer can be found in this equation:

Bamus starts out at noon on foot from the Red Lion toward the Purple Cow, and at the same time Chamus starts out from the Purple Cow toward the Red Lion on his bicycle.
They meet 4 miles from the Red Lion, and have a friendly conversation that lasts 10 minutes. Then Chamus gives the bike to Bamus and heads to the Red Lion on foot, while at the same time Bamus heads toward the Purple Cow on the bicycle.
When each arrives, he stops to drink a flagon of ale in 3 minutes, and then he heads back to his starting point.
This time they meet 7 miles from the Purple Cow. After another friendly 10 minute chat, Bamus returns the bicycle to Chamus and they each continue back to their starting point, where they enjoy another 3 minute ale.
Deciding to do it again, they try to repeat the first part of their journey, this time meeting only 2 miles from the Red Lion.
Assuming each person walks and rides at his own uniform speeds, how far is it from the Red Lion to the Purple Cow?

 

Glib answers aside, the pads are fine; I put about 10K miles a year on the 996; if my pads looked as yours do, I'd check back in a couple of months and compare to the previous photo.

Note that the post in your photo above the rotor hat is fixed; the pad behind it will move closer to the rotor as the pad material wears away.

You know that you will eventually need new pads; why not order them now and compare your remaining pad with the thickness of the braking material on a new pad? If you can compare yours to a known new sample, you can get a much better estimate of how much life the current pads have left.

 

Those have over half their life left in my estimation. So depending on whether you track, brake hard, drive normal, or drive granny, 10,000-40,000 miles. Normal driving I would guess 30k give it take. This is assuming they are you fronts pads. If they are your rears, they should be good until 2050.

 

Concur with Slakker. When I was a paid Chrysler tech, we'd consider those to have at least 20,000 miles on them. Naturally with a Porsche, pad life depends more on how you brake, whether your trips are mostly freeway or in-town, etc. My Lucerne has pads 1/2 as thick as yours and they're original with 111,000 miles on them. But it's more freeway.

 

How many miles on the current pads in the photo? Based on that maybe we could give a "better" estimate assuming your driving style stays the same.

 

Crazy fact #whatever: The way stability control works on a Nissan Murano results in burning through rear pads at approx. 2x the rate of front pads. Never had a car that did THAT before.

 

Same thing with the GT3 drivers at the track that leave the nannies on and let the car save their @ss on every turn. But for $200k, I think they should expect to feel like a rock star at the track without learning how to really drive.

 

LOL, thanks for the feedback.

I know I should've provided more background information - completely forgotten to include those as I was writing a work email at the same time, and putting a lot more attention on the email :-(

Anyway here goes:
- front pads
- drive like a granny - never tracked, only got a workout once every a couple of months - unfortunately it is like that around here, not a lot of opportunity to properly enjoy the car
- pads and rotors were replaced in 2007 at around 30,000 kms - car is now at 83,000 kms

Based on these facts I have concluded that the pads are fine for the next tens of thousands of kms and I should leave them alone.

For future references, esp. for glib answers, please provide a TL;DR if it was going to be longer than 3 paragraphs. :-)

 

I agree with your conclusion. New pads are 12mm thick (just the material) and the wear limit is 2mm (2.5mm if you want to save the sensors). The backing plate is about 5mm so you can do the math. I would say 20-30,000 km easily, with some safety margin.

 

That would equate to about 5-8 years of driving at my rate!! I swapped the rears about three years ago but not the rotors (based on dealer's assessment that they needed changing). Thanks Ahsai.