Rear brake pad lifespan

I have a little over 200k miles on my truck now, and have never replaced the rear pads. In fact, they look like their at about the half-life point. The fronts have only been replaced twice. Usage for the truck has been, approximately: general purposes (160k miles)/light hauling (20k miles)/very heavy hauling (19k miles). I've never noticed any what would be called poor braking performance, so have never been concerned that the rear calipers are locked up. Also, I do not have an exhaust brake (yet...) on the truck.

Has anybody else seen this kind of wear out of their rear pads?

Steve

 

I had an exh brake on my 04, but never did pads until I did wheel bearing / seal repair on the rear around 160k... as you said about 1/2 still there, but decided to do since I was there.. (after i did new pads a caliper locked up!).. If you down shift and engine brake, I think the pads last a really long time. I also only did front pads once.. but then again I had an exh brake. (truck had 200k when I sold it).

 

OEM rear brake pads on my 2005 manual transmission lasted over 150k.

 

On my 2008. I had the rears replaced at 92K in 2015. I had the entire bake system flushed and new fluid along with the rear brakes only as the front were replaced at 72K, the year before.

I tow a heavy 12K 5er with my truck and at the time was doing about 10 to 20K miles a year traveling.

Everyone's driving habits are unique to them and how they operate their truck. So, generalizations are pretty hard to do and compare between trucks. As an example, both of my boys have Ram diesel trucks, and their maintenance is all different compared to my truck. We each drive them differently and use them for different driving requirements.

 

As others have said it depends on use. I DD and commute with city traffic. Compared to someone who tows cross country 5K miles a year mostly highway driving and then sitting until next years trip the pad life would vary greatly.

FWIW I recommend just taking the caliper(not the piston)/ pads apart to clean out old grease and make sure everything is sliding as it should every once in a while, that'll help you maximize pad life/wear. I went through my brakes front and rear last year I think, and installed Akebono Ceramics with Teflon coated pad guide hardware/ new slide pins and grease. I just did a tire rotation and I was able to move and compress my calipers by hand just pushing on it lightly.

Wear will vary with usage, but the factory semi metallic's are long lived on these trucks as well as the rotors.

 

X2 on what @Darkbloodmon says! This is my once a year task when going through truck. I've had stuck calipers on other vehicles. Worst part is dual rear wheels off and back on! All goes with the territory and life of the truck! Little bit of TLC goes a long way and saves on buying new truck unless you what too!

 

Your wear pretty much matches mine. I had to replace a rear set with most material remaining because one of the pistons froze and started to create uneven pad wear. I attribute to boat launching in saltwater and having stopped doing at least for saltwater haven't seen that issue return. Ideally I would be servicing caliper as others suggest, but I'm running x3 original calipers without issue at 200k. Only reason I changed a caliper is that bleed screw froze when I tried to bleed after changing front pads. If I remember the casting chipped at bleed screw location when got it free. I recommend flushing brake fluid as I believe it is hygroscopic and increases the chances of contaminated/frozen pistons.