I suggest that you stop dealing with these people and talk with an independent service shop known to the people on these forums. I use Graham Ratcliff Motors in Ringwood and can recommend them to you. I know of at least 4 other shops (Blackburn, Clayton, Moorabbin, Kilsyth) that have good reputations.

There is no magic about Jag brakes or European brakes. For production cars, unless there is a problem (which they should be fixing) the disc rotors should be good for at least a couple of sets of pads.

I strongly suspect that you are being over serviced and overcharged.

PM me if you would like some help.

Cheers, Steve

 

Courier vehicles dont wear out pads that fast, and rears!? I hate in when they do this, it smears all the people out there who deal with people honestly.

 

You could try your local branch of ABS

ABS. Auto brakes & service. National car servicing, brake clutch car service | Home

They have at least 30 branches in Victoria, I have used my local one twice to check if I was doing things right with my brakes, both times they put the car on a hoist and had a look at no charge. Maybe they are all that good to deal with.
They did ask if I would bring the car back to them if I couldn't sort it myself. Which I would honour if I got stuck. I went back to have hoses made up when I needed them.

 

For that model year the brake wear would be around 30,000 km for rear brakes and around 60,000 km for front brakes. Discs will be within spec at the first pad change but won't last for the entire life of the second set of pads. New discs with every pad set are the correct service procedure whatever others may suggest.

Pad wear is of course more rapid in urban driving than out on the open road.

Everyone experiences different brake wear rates but the wear rate for your own driving style for one particular car should be very predictable.

Good service shops faced with customers who don't know much about cars tend to give very conservative and safe advice. If they expect you not to return for service before the brakes they observe may be worn out they will recommend early replacement. Nobody should criticize them for that. Brakes and tires MUST be in top nick all of the time, your life may depend on it, literally.

 

Really? the rears are half the fronts? Thats an odd car. Would that have something to do with traction control? Just wondering why the rears would be going out faster.

The owner is getting the car serviced every 10k, they are supposed to be a good shop and they let her get into this situation? Then they make the generic statement that European cars need pad and disc replacement at the same time. None of my European cars ever have. I have a lot of time for good service shops, but if the sequence of events is accurate it would be hard to classify that place as one of them.

 

The XF has a reputation for wearing out the rear brakes faster than the fronts, opposite to most cars, and the generally accepted explanation is it's because of the anti-dive function built into the braking software. Apparently when braking firmly the rear brakes activate a little bit earlier and harder than the front brakes. Another possible explanation is the way the Emergency Park Brake (EPB) works, especially the release function.

 

SAAB have recommended disc and pad changes for years now. It's the newer lining materials since asbestos was banned completely. Also, thinner discs save wright and cost and planning for more frequent replacement allows thinner discs to be fitted new.

Traction control does act on the rear brakes but this is true for all such systems.

Jaguar sizes their brakes and specifies their pads primarily for stopping performance and not pad life. The engineering shows. These are heavy cars and they stop very well, right at the top performance levels available.

My personal preference is strong brakes rather than long pad life. I feel the same about tire tread life for the same reason: safety.

 

Jagular - My Audi A6 was / is a big heavy and powerful car too, but there was never any need to change pads AND discs every time!


I hear where you're coming from with safety being paramount, but just replacing discs for the sake of it when not necessarily needed, I can't agree with.


Anyhow, just curious as to whether we're nay further forward with this, in either getting assistance, someone to do a visual check and or another reputable Indy as a 3rd opinion.

 

It's not me. My very experienced SAAB mechanic, who also does all my non warranty work on my Audi, my Alfa Romeo and my Subaru, though he won't touch my Jags!, is very definite when he says don't fit used pads to old discs.

It is false economy, and ultimately unsafe. Just don't to it.

 

I fitted new pads all round to 'old' (50,000 km or 30,000 miles) discs two months ago, and no problems whatsoever since.
But I did have all four rotors machined at the time, all are about halfway to minimum thickness so they should last until new pads are needed again.

 

Did you mean new pads to old used/discs?

If so, probably 90% of cars on the road would be considered unsafe by those standards.

 

Seriously? Discs wear the same as pads?
Not in my Garage they don't and I'll be very difficult to persuade otherwise regardless of SAAB mechanics.
I'll confess to knowing nothing of SABBs but something of brakes.

 

Thanks that interesting, like braking a motorbike. It is a nice feeling when the car squats on the road in heavy braking rather than nose diving. The power and stability of braking has been one of the things that really impresses me even on my older model, especially for a heavy car.

The differing opinions on this thread and the certainty with which they are expressed reminds me of " what is the best oil/grade of oil?" threads. Just seems to come back with what you are comfortable with.

I hope the original poster gets to a reasonable solution with her issue.

 

I've looked through the workshop manual for an explanation of this rear braking bias, and this is all I can find (page 695 of my copy):

Electronic Brake Force Distribution
EBD (electronic brake force distribution) limits the brake pressure applied to the rear wheels. When the brakes are applied, the weight of the vehicle transfers forwards, reducing the ability of the rear wheels to transfer braking effort to the road surface.
This may cause the rear wheels to slip and make the vehicle unstable.
EBD uses the ABS braking hardware to automatically optimize the pressure to the rear brakes, below the point where ABS is normally invoked.
NOTE: Only the rear brakes are controlled by the EBD function.

 

Having had lots of experience with Jag specialists Graham Ratcliff Motors in Ringwood, I wholly endorse Yarpos' recommendation. If this was my problem I'd get their professional opinion and then act on it!

 

I do and they are, at least during brake pad bedding in which can take up to 3,000 km on old discs compared to a few hundred using new or resurfaced discs. Resurfacing modern brake discs is a pointless exercise, it costs more than new discs and reduces disc thickness much faster then normal wear. Just don't do it, fit new discs every time and be safer.

Bear in mind that many drivers do not know how to make an emergency stop, regard abs operation as a fault because they so infrequently experience it unless the roads are slippery and never intentionally brake very hard at all.

If you use your brakes as intended by the manufacturer you would immediately notice the poor performance of new pads on old discs and cease trying to save the tiny amount of money you are actually saving.

 

Not the same as but faster than they used to. More than half the allowable wear occurs with a single set of pads. You can fit new pads to old discs but if you do the discs will be fully worn out, below safe spec, before the new pads are worn out.

Any reputable mechanic will tell you the same thing. No reputable mechanic will fit new pads to old discs without resurfacing the old discs. If your mechanic is any good he will know fitting new discs is the only safe practice.

 

Contrary to popular opinion anti dive is purely a function of suspension geometry and not brakes.

Suspension dive forces result from weight transfer and dive occurs regardless of which axle is braked. You can figure this out by comparing dive to squat. All sprung vehicles will develop squat forces under acceleration regardless of which axle is driven: awd, fwd and rwd all squat in the same manner and for the same reason, springs.

 

There's plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Just like 90% of the cars on the road being dangerous under your definition as mentioned above, I'd guess 99% of mechanics are therefore not 'reputable'.

 

Yes, ebd reduces brake pressure to the rear axle because of suspension dive so it can hardly reduce suspension dive. By effectively biasing brake force to the front axle the ebd in effect increases total braking power and increases dive by inducing higher weight transfer forces. Stopping distances are reduced despite higher dive forces. Front brakes on a softly sprung road car develop over 80% of total braking forces, which is why front brakes are so much bigger than rear brakes in all road cars AND why Jaguar fits such small fast wearing rear brakes.

The other thing ebd does is adjust brake force left to right promoting lateral or directional stability as well.

When combined with traction control and stability control the driver hardly needs to know how to drive any longer! If you don't believe how good these electronic systems are try driving on a wet or icy road with them all switched off, that's an eye opener and often a sphincter tightened to boot.