I was shocked to see the brake pad worn light came on today on my 2015 xjl supercharged at only 17k miles. Is this normal?

 

Social, part of it depends on how you drive the car. You live in a major city and do a lot of stop and go traffic/in town traffic, going through a set of pads in 17K miles is possible. If you do mainly highway driving, then that would be abnormal. A check of the other set of pads on the same end of the car will tell you if you have a caliper issue or not (another reason why you could have gone through the pads so fast).

A check that you can do is to get out on the highway and do a run at say 70 mph for 10 miles. After 10 miles, find a place that you can pull off to that you can do some easy braking to get to a stop. As soon as you get to a stop, place the back of your hand (not the front, the back is more sensitive to heat and also if you happen to get too close, you will naturally pull away, not tend to grab) near each wheel. You are wanting to compare the 4 wheels to each other. Specifically, the left and right sides at either the front or rear of the car should be pretty much the same temperature. The fronts should be slightly warmer than the rears.

Like I mentioned, you want to get close as practical, but not so close that you burn yourself. Normally you can position your hand between the spokes, getting about 2" or so from the rotors. NEVER!!!! touch the rotor itself. It will be hot.

Keep in mind that the supercharged version uses more of a conventional brake pad as compared to the base model which uses a metallic brake pad. This was done to give the supercharged cars better braking. The softer pad material used in the supercharged cars can result in quicker wearing.

 

My previous car used to get new pads every 5-6k miles. 17k is something I can only dream of

 

My 2015 had the brake pad warning come on at just around 11,000 miles.

I do not drive a lot and I am not hard on braking.

I drove the car to dealer who after inspection said that the right front caliper was defective and caused brake pad to wear out in certain spots near the sensor which caused the early brake pad warning.

The dealer replaced both front calipers, rotors and pads under warranty. He also replaced the rear pads.

It could be possible that you have a similar problem with a defective caliper causing your brake pads to wear out prematurely.

Ed

 

Looking through the service records that came with my 2014 XJR it look like pads about every 20k are the norm...

 

17,000 miles is about right. Mine went at 18,000. It is probably the rear pads since they wear out faster. Yep I said the rears. I now use aftermarket pads which doubles the life of the pads and considerably reduces the brake dust. I’ve been using the Centric brand and am happy with them. I have 90,000 miles on the XJ

 

So this is my situation as well. 11,250 miles on my 2015 XJL Supercharged and I have the brake wear indication as well. I am the original owner and am definitely not hard on the brakes. I wonder if I would have similar results with the dealer here... I mean, is it really a standard warranty issue or do you feel your dealer just gave you a break?

 

It is normal for brake pads to wear that quickly - especially on Jaguar, even Land Rover.
Here in NZ, I was seeing mostly XF's ( more popular model at the time ) where the rear brake pads were already 50% worn with around 10km ( around 6k miles ).


When you actually take out the brake pad, to me there is more brake pad material left to keep going. Because Jaguar has gone back to using " wear " sensors on the brakes, its to prevent you from going metal to metal.


It is possible that you may have a brake caliper issue, might be worth a check to make sure all is well.

 

Please see my above posting where dealer determined that one front caliper was bad and that the front calipers, rotors and brake pads were replaced under warranty when my car had 11,000 miles on it and I was getting the dashboard warning stating that my brake pads were low.

The dealer gave me no problem at all to do these replacements under warranty and he said that with moderate driving and braking, the pads should last at least 20,000 miles. He used all factory OEM parts.

Good luck!

 

The life of brake components depends on driving habits, terrain/environment, type of vehicle, etc...


Yes a faulty caliper will cause premature brake pad wear, but I wouldn't be jumping to conclusions that something " has " the be wrong because brake pads on other vehicles last longer.


Example - I've had my XJ40 for 6 years now, haven't replaced rear brake pads or rotors. Only replaced front brake pads and rotors. My car is heavier than most, specially newer Jags. When I was still in service dept, I was replacing rear brake pads on XF's, XJ's ( X351 ). Both these vehicles should be lighter than mine as the body is mostly aluminium, mine is steel. Since we have a mountainous terrain, brakes don't last as long as they would in a terrain that is flat. If you do mostly highway driving, brakes will last longer as opposed to city ( stop & go ) driving.


Just keep in mind that there are many factors than can contribute to wear and tear on vehicles.

 

The brake pad warning light can save you money, since it comes on before the pads are completely worn out. If your rotors aren't badly scored, you can do a "pad slap" without resurfacing the rotors and thereby extend their life.

I did a pad slap at 30,000 miles on my XKR with the Alcon Performance Brake package. New rotors cost over $500 each. See my post #18: https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...gistery-96830/

 

deleted - duplicate post

 

Just figured I'd update my input to this... For me, it turned out to just be a broken brake wear sensor. As you can see there is/was plenty of meat left on the pad. This pic actually taken at 15K miles. I do wish I had just got under the car sooner.... I had purchased all I needed to actually change the pads before actually just getting under there. Well at least I'm prepared for when the time come. For now, it was a $15 fix.
Lesson: Take a look first.