atrjeep said:
2009 Jetta TDI, metal/metal on rear brakes at 18500 miles. Dealer told me that I should go through 2 sets of rears to 1 set of front brakes. Measured the pad on front and its brand new. They wanted $500 for brakes/pads, told them to go to hell after less than 20k miles. Extremely disappointed. Is this normal to burn through rear pads that quickly?
Got over 50k on my Altima and 105k on my Tahoe with more than 3/4 pad left all the way around. So, obviously I am not hard on brakes.
Please someone help me out here! I am not sure if I should get some aftermarket pads/rotors or what!
You can search this web site for other takes. The direct answer/s is/are there are a load of yes'es and a fair amount of no's. The easy answer is brake in such a way as to transfer the weight and braking load to the front. In effect, your braking behavior transfers the weight and brake load to the REAR !!??
The first thing to do is to make sure there are no trouble issues, i.e., no dragging parking/front/rear brakes pads warped rotors, mal adjustments, etc. The dealer can check this for you. You may not trust his assessment at this point. So ask a local independent shop or local guru or GTG. Indeed you can DIY. So you really have 5 or more options.
The dealer is half right/wrong.
He is FULLY correct, if you don't understand the mechanics and/or do NOT change your braking behavior.
He is fully WRONG, if you do understand the mechanics and/or DO change your braking behavior.
So given no mal functions, he is making (his) the prediction given observation of the real world results (yours) . Based on 2 jobs @ 500 each, I am betting he does not want you to change your behavior!! You are HARD on rear brake pads !! If he did not trouble shoot or missed the problem, he is of course, incorrect.
For a host of reasons, the front wheel drive/engine VW's are built with a rear braking bias. They are made to run on the autobahn and the brake (systems) pads and rotors are fully capable of doing 125 mph to ZERO with the MAJORITY of the braking done by the front rotors and pads with of course the front weight transfer. As you can probably surmise, this is why the car has rear braking bias. So with US speed limits of 65 mph, I would guess most of your braking is done at FAR LOWER speeds and with almost no (REAR) weight transfer. You also probably trail brake a lot.
Early on, I was made aware of the rear braking bias on the VW Jetta TDI's AND the explanation above. At 127,000 miles based on the F/R pad measurements I swag the oem pads F/R will last a min of 250,000 miles.
I made the mistake of buying replacement pads (Mintex) @ 10,000 miles or so after reading many posts of pads wearing prematurely (especially REAR pads)
Let us know what you decide to do. All the best. In the very worst case DIY the pads and rotors changes.