Unlikely front brake wearout?

So here's an interesting experience...

Went for our annual tax grab of a vehicle inspection.

Our iKegDeliveryVehicle has been working 12 months, has 14,500 km and we've been told our front brakes are under the 2 mm threshold.

The local dealership is not an iMiev dealer, and this is the first one they've seen, but they brought up the spec sheet for the pad, and it starts out at 10 mm.

Of course, they said that brake wear is not covered by warranty, and I wasn't quite sure where to start...

The dealership doesn't understand how the brake system works, so it's a bit like talking to the plaster, I've told them to call Mitsu Canada and challenge if the brake pads could possibly wear out this fast even if I drove around with my foot so far down on the pedal that the service brakes were permanently on.

I am a crazy hypermiler, my wife goes crazy driving behind me as the brake lights only come on in the few feet before a stop.

My Insight has 55,000 km on the original brakes, as they should be.

My iMiev was a demo, with only 850 km on the ODO when we got it, that has me wondering a bit.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

NB

Is it possible for you to take a picture of the pads? I can compare them to mine at 25,000 miles.

With the regenerative brakes on the i-MiEV, the friction brakes should be far from worn.

Yeah was it just one pad that was worn or all four? But even if one pad was dragging it would show up as reduced range--what was your typical rated range number?

could it be that the brake usage is so little that the discs rust, and so when they are used they are extremeley abrasive to the brake pads?
From my time as a Prius owner (2 x NHW20 over 8 years) there was an issue with front brakes, but I think it was disc wear rather than pad wear, caused by infrequent use.

How often & how much weight do you haul. Are you located in hilly country?

Thanks for all the great responses, I'm even more convinced it shouldn't be like this, but I'm waiting to hear from the dealer to see what they have to say.

PV1 said:

Is it possible for you to take a picture of the pads? I can compare them to mine at 25,000 miles.

With the regenerative brakes on the i-MiEV, the friction brakes should be far from worn.

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Will try and get a picture, been wanting to have a look myself to confirm anyway.

kiev said:

Yeah was it just one pad that was worn or all four? But even if one pad was dragging it would show up as reduced range--what was your typical rated range number?

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The way they spoke it was all 4, Summer range was around 125 km.

misterbleepy said:

could it be that the brake usage is so little that the discs rust, and so when they are used they are extremeley abrasive to the brake pads?
From my time as a Prius owner (2 x NHW20 over 8 years) there was an issue with front brakes, but I think it was disc wear rather than pad wear, caused by infrequent use.

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Going to have a look at the rotors when I get at the picture and I'll let you know.

sandange said:

How often & how much weight do you haul. Are you located in hilly country?

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Usually only 4 kegs at a time, so under 100 kg, we are on the top of a hill and have a hill on the other side of town we have to go to, but we very rarely use our mechanical brakes when going down them, we use B all the way down and have a nice runoff to the stops at the bottom of them. Other than those hills, not anything remarkable.

NB

Please keep us updated on your brake issue. I have a feeling the pads are far more than 2mm and you are being taken for a ride. I would demand to see the brake pads, and preferably before they get 'lost' or are even taken off the caliper.

HParkEV said:

Please keep us updated on your brake issue. I have a feeling the pads are far more than 2mm and you are being taken for a ride. I would demand to see the brake pads, and preferably before they get 'lost' or are even taken off the caliper.

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+1 Who performs this "inspection"? If I may suggest, just jack the car up, take off a front wheel, and have a look for yourself. If, indeed, the pads are worn, we need to put our collective thinking caps on.

HParkEV said:

... I have a feeling the pads are far more than 2mm and you are being taken for a ride...

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My dealership is not trustworthy.

Left them full size so you can have a good look....

One each of the outboards and one through the inspection hole, looks to me like they're all fine...
Hard to tell what the pad is through the hole, you need to spin the disk to figure out what is what, but when you've done that, it's obvious.

NoBeard, thank you for posting the photos - I swear the pictures took over an hour to load with my marginal connection while sitting on a catamaran outside Noumea. :shock:

The third photo clearly shows negligible wear of the pad on that side. I am still having difficulty seeing and fully understanding the first two photos.

Who or what entity told you that the pads were down to 2mm?

JoeS said:

Who or what entity told you that the pads were down to 2mm?

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Local Mitsu Dealer, not iMiev Certified, first one they've seen.

Both the outboards are like new. Inboards are hard to see through the inspection holes, but I think they're fine.

Going to take it to another independant shop first of the week and get confirmation they're fine.

NB

Perhaps they couldn't find any other work to do on an EV so they came up with a plan to still make some money on it...

And now for "The Rest of the Story" , (apologies to Paul Harvey for that)

So, turned out that one of 4 pads was worn out due to it being stuck in the caliper.
I was told that the front brakes need to be pulled out and the calipers lubed every 2 years per the service guide, which made me laugh since it's only got 1 year of actual driving on it. In fact, we were on the 1 year anniversary date of our registration of the car when the fault was discovered.

To review, the history of our iMiev is that it was the one that Mitsubishi Canada loaned to car writers to use for their reviews.
It had been driven for about 850 km, and then parked for a year plus, while it was unsaleable due to the rebate not being available.
When i got it, I was told not to worry, it had the full warranty.

Because MC had registered the vehicle, they are calling the in service date the day they started using it, as a result, the 1 year 20K anything warranty had in fact expired before I bought it. Also, it turns out, I have a significantly shorter warranty than I expected, as they are sticking to the warranty not being the day it went into actual service, but the day they started using it for car reviewers.

The local Mitsu dealer gave me "a deal" on the job which made it same as a brake shop might charge, $120 and I can live with the bill, but think it's incredibly short sighted of MC to refuse any warranty reset request, as they've just turned a "super fan" into someone who will now start all the inevitable conversations with, "Well, we like the car, but..." and then go on to tell a story... and I'm a story kind of guy.

Pretty short sighted given we're in a market with one iMiev in real life service aside from the one the city bylaw guy drives. When I end the story, as I inevitably will, with... the car would be fine if they had a company with a backbone behind it and I'd more likely get a CMax or a Leaf or maybe one of the newer plug in hybrids that are in the pipeline it will just damage the company's reputation in a way that just doesn't compare to their cost associated with this repair.

Shows the company makes bad decisions, like Suzuki did until their inevitable destruction in the marketplace, sadly orphaning our SX4.

Anyway, end of rant, just make sure you all know your warranty dates and check everything you can before the final date, as MC has no interest in your welfare after their strict contractual rights.

NB