PV1
Well-known member
Well, it finally happened. Koorz needed some TLC outside of the usual. I had to replace the front brake pads.
It sucked that nobody stocked the pads, but I was able to get them fairly quickly through Napa, and changing them was really easy. I'm guessing that the previous owner didn't keep the car in a garage, and had very little regen in the winter with a cold pack (Koorz lived in Michigan for 3 years before I purchased it). For a car that I got with 20,000 miles, it had 20% capacity loss and front brakes that were over halfway gone. Between both packs that Bear had, it didn't lose more than 5 miles of range total. The current pack is 6 years old and has over 28,000 miles on it and still gets its original range.
About a year ago, I noticed that the BRAKE warning light would appear under heavy acceleration, which I had figured out was the brake fluid being slightly low. The other day, though, I had to brake hard when the person ahead of me decided to not pay attention to the green light that I was approaching. It actually took everything I had to keep from hitting them as the pedal went all the way to the floor but didn't have a lot of stopping power. After that, the front driver's side brake had metal-on-metal rubbing, which meant a pad was gone, and the BRAKE light would come on with about half power acceleration.
Sure enough, both inside brake pads on the front were completely worn out. On the plus side, putting new pads in brought the brake fluid back up to the Max line (intentional design choice so a warning light appears just before the pads need replacement?) and the brakes are as strong as Bear's now.
On a side note, has anyone noticed the trend that low-mileage EVs have more issues than high-mileage EVs? It seems these cars want to be driven a lot.
It sucked that nobody stocked the pads, but I was able to get them fairly quickly through Napa, and changing them was really easy. I'm guessing that the previous owner didn't keep the car in a garage, and had very little regen in the winter with a cold pack (Koorz lived in Michigan for 3 years before I purchased it). For a car that I got with 20,000 miles, it had 20% capacity loss and front brakes that were over halfway gone. Between both packs that Bear had, it didn't lose more than 5 miles of range total. The current pack is 6 years old and has over 28,000 miles on it and still gets its original range.
About a year ago, I noticed that the BRAKE warning light would appear under heavy acceleration, which I had figured out was the brake fluid being slightly low. The other day, though, I had to brake hard when the person ahead of me decided to not pay attention to the green light that I was approaching. It actually took everything I had to keep from hitting them as the pedal went all the way to the floor but didn't have a lot of stopping power. After that, the front driver's side brake had metal-on-metal rubbing, which meant a pad was gone, and the BRAKE light would come on with about half power acceleration.
Sure enough, both inside brake pads on the front were completely worn out. On the plus side, putting new pads in brought the brake fluid back up to the Max line (intentional design choice so a warning light appears just before the pads need replacement?) and the brakes are as strong as Bear's now.
On a side note, has anyone noticed the trend that low-mileage EVs have more issues than high-mileage EVs? It seems these cars want to be driven a lot.