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According to JLR all their cars with low brake pad sensors (and the associated warning on the dash) are meant to trigger when the pad gets down to 25% of new thickness.
New front pads are 13 mm thick and new rear pads are 10.8 mm thick and minimum thickness before replacement is required is 2 mm (same across the range of iron brakes, CCM are different).
So if the wear sensor/warning is accurate you still have plenty of pad left when it triggers and no need to panic just yet.
But that is a big if, these sensors are known to be problematic, sometimes they trigger when there is heaps of pad left, sometimes they don't trigger until there is only 1 or 2 mm left, and sometimes they don't trigger at all! From all my reading on this and other forums they are accurate maybe 90% of the time but IMHO a 10% error rate is way too high for something like this.
Also there are only two sensors so only two of the eight pads are being monitored, the left front inner pad and the right rear inner pad, and the dash warning doesn't tell you which one!
The ONLY way to be sure and safe is to whip the pads out and inspect them properly, not as big or difficult job as you might think.
On all three of my Jags one of the first things I did was to disable or remove the sensors as I simply don't trust them, instead I manually inspect the pads every couple of months or so if/when I know they could be getting down to under half original thickness.
Did that prevent the light from popping up on the dash??
Originally Posted by OzXFR
According to JLR all their cars with low brake pad sensors (and the associated warning on the dash) are meant to trigger when the pad gets down to 25% of new thickness.
New front pads are 13 mm thick and new rear pads are 10.8 mm thick and minimum thickness before replacement is required is 2 mm (same across the range of iron brakes, CCM are different).
So if the wear sensor/warning is accurate you still have plenty of pad left when it triggers and no need to panic just yet.
But that is a big if, these sensors are known to be problematic, sometimes they trigger when there is heaps of pad left, sometimes they don't trigger until there is only 1 or 2 mm left, and sometimes they don't trigger at all! From all my reading on this and other forums they are accurate maybe 90% of the time but IMHO a 10% error rate is way too high for something like this.
Also there are only two sensors so only two of the eight pads are being monitored, the left front inner pad and the right rear inner pad, and the dash warning doesn't tell you which one!
The ONLY way to be sure and safe is to whip the pads out and inspect them properly, not as big or difficult job as you might think.
On all three of my Jags one of the first things I did was to disable or remove the sensors as I simply don't trust them, instead I manually inspect the pads every couple of months or so if/when I know they could be getting down to under half original thickness.
did that prevent the light from popping up on the dash?
did that prevent the light from popping up on the dash?
Yes.
I'm sure I have explained elsewhere on this forum but you can't just remove the pad wear sensors as that will cause the "low brake pad" warning to trigger and stay on all the time, you need to keep the wear sensors plugged in electronically to the wiring plugs up high in the wheel arches (left front and right rear). You can either cut the wires and join them or simply remove the (untriggered still operative) sensors from the brake pads and zip tie them up out of the way, that is what I have done on the F-Type and the XFR and XFS before that. The wear sensors rely on a closed circuit ie they are triggered if/when the circuit is cut/opened and removing the electrical plug opens the circuit.
How do you disable them or bypass brake sensors? Does it make the car run rough when brake faults come on?
The previous post answers your questions, and the car running rough and brake faults (whether real or spurious) have nothing to do with each other.
If, however, you mean "does the car feel rough (especially when braking) once the "low brake pad" warning comes on?", then yes that is possible but very very rare.
One or more brake pads would need to have worn right down to nothing or near nothing before the car drives "rough" AND the low brake pad warning would need to have come on way after it should have come on, read post #6.
Funny enough that this thread should come up: my brake pad warning light came on during the drive home last Wednesday - and then hasn't reappeared since.
Only thing I changed was plugging the battery in overnight.
In terms of the actual wear I'm currently around 4mm at the thinnest point, maybe a touch below. Checked not too long ago.
Brake Pads Worn Warning Light
