08-18-2013, 04:29 PM
space-time wrote:
I drove only manual cars so far and my brakes will last 60-65k miles (front disk) or about 130-140k miles (rear drum). On both cars, both me and my wife. I guess we just downshift sometimes to slow down, don't rely only on brakes. This is mostly suburb driving with occasional long trips on highway.
Very similar practice and conditions to ours but our car has discs all around. The car now has traveled 200,000 miles and we just put on the second set of pads.
I just bought a van, auto transmission, disk both front and rear. Looking at maintenance records, seems previous owner replaced brake pads about every 25-30k miles.
I had an Oldsmobile sedan that couldn't go more than 12,000 miles between brake jobs. Disgusting.
I think your supposition regarding manual vs. automatic transmissions is on the right track but it seems to me that some brake designs or implementations are just bad.