When did you have to change your front and rear brakes for your mazda 3? I drive a 2005 Mazda 3 GT and I brought it into the dealership the other day for an oil change, they told me that I only had 20% left on my brakes and I needed to replace them. I hardly drive my car and there's only 53000kms on it? Are they trying to make money off me or is this pretty common for mazdas? I'm just thinking that it's a bit early for brake replacement?

 

That's about 33k miles. I'm at 40k miles and have around 50% left. Someone else on here had to replace theirs with fewer than yours I think.

 

All depends on ones own driving style. I have 40% or more left on mine. I still have clean calipers and rotors. I have 82,000 kilometres on mine.

Brakes wear as you use'em and how hard you use'em.

City driving will wear them out more then highway.

Just have a look at them thru the rim. Does it look like they are worn out. Your fronts will wear faster then your rears.

 

Not entirely true. Mazda uses a softer pad composition on the rear brake pads and it tends to wear faster than the harder material in the front pads. Also looking through the rim really isn't a good way to check them. The 3 is notorious for wearing the inner pad more quickly than the outer pad, so a cursory check could show lots of pad life remaining but the inner pad could be getting ready to go.

To the OP before replacing components I would look at the pads myself (or yourself in this case) and see how they're doing. To see the inner pad you will have to remove the wheels, so maybe next time you rotate your tires. Beyond that when the brake pads wear towards the backing plate they will begin to squeak as a warning to replace them. If you go past that then they'll make an unreal metal on metal squeal. If you have no change in braking performance and aren't hearing any noises then I wouldn't worry about having the brakes done immediately, though that doesn't mean you might not want to keep it in mind.

 

Not that I don't believe you, but I would have to take an educated guess and say that the front pads do most certainly wear down quicker then the rears. First, I have had to change my front pads twice before the rear (now I am just lazy and change both at the same time so I can do it less) and secondly that is why when you look at any Mazda they always have 10 times the amount of brake pad dust on the front rims and almost none on the rear rim (or any car for that matter).

 

I'm not disputing that the front brakes on all cars carry most of the work load of stopping the car. Actually I know this for a fact as on my old ranger each of the four brake lines had to be replaced in sequence over a six month period as each one rusted through..... and when the fronts leaked the truck basically wouldn't stop.

What I'm saying is that because Mazda uses a softer pad composition on the rear brake they tend to wear quickly, often faster than the more heavily used front brakes that have a more durable composition.

As to brake dust on the fronts as proof of them being used more. While that is generally a good indicator, it's not absolute. For instance the OEM pads on the first 3 years or so of the Mz3's production produced way WAY more brake dust on the rear wheels than on the front ones. Mazda eventually changed the pad composition they used on the stock pads and now they produce much less dust. Also perhaps the softer pads on the first several years was actually softer than the current gen. rear brakes and they wore more quickly.

 

That was me. I just replaced my front pads last Thursday at 28K. I do drive on back roads 44miles/day that are windy so i'm a bit rougher on my brakes than the usually person. I have a heavy foot at times so there again, I brake tougher and I also rarely downshift so i'm using the brakes more. You put all of those factors together, I understand why mine were shot. If you're a highway driver, you should get plenty more than I get.

 

I believe Mazda used a metallic based brake pad in the rear and a ceramic based brake pad in the front. This is the reason for the excess brake dust on the rear wheels (at least on my '04 sedan). It also means that the rear rotors wear out faster than the fronts too. I personally got over 60K miles on my rears before replacing them, and around 80K on the fronts. But I downshift a lot. The replacements seem much better in terms of brake dust. We'll see how much life I get out of them. And when my brakes went they didn't squeek, they flat out made a loud grinding noise because of the excessive groove in the rotor. It was a gawd awful noise!

If you have a manual try downshifting through the gears to save brake life. No your clutch and tranny isn't going to go, trust me. Nor is your engine going to incur any damage by downshifting to a higher RPM. Those are all myths or common misconceptions. I got over 110K on my original clutch, tranny, and motor and its fine. So long as you don't red line it for too long, ride the clutch or miss a shift.

 

What is the typical brake pad life on these cars? (Yes, we know it varys depending on driver, and we know that rears can wear faster than fronts just like some Mercedes models, etc.) What have owners experienced?

 

I had to replace my rears at about 30k miles. My fronts are just getting ready to need replacement at 113k miles.