front brake pad wear indicator warning light.....

Have been watching my brakes for a while due over 100,000 miles on fronts and still original..

I have a bunch of things and anticipate putting 2000 km's on the car before time will allow me to do the brakes...the pad thickness looks ok to me for a while yet, anybody out there with experience with this?

Craig B

You would need to state the thickness, or post a pic or something for one of us to help you here. IS the warning light on then?

And you mean 100,000 kms, not miles - right?

You'll probably be alright, there's a fair bit of pad left after the sensor triggers. But you really should look closely at both sides in/out pads. The sensor is only on one pad, i believe on the drivers side. If you haven't heard grinding yet.....probably ok

When my light came on I had about 120k and the pads still had quite a bit left. I just did not like the break light so I changed everything.

Thanks guys, yup, found the sensor, still a fair bit of meat on the pads.....I should be ok til the parts arrive, its all highway driving anyways....brakes are rarely used.

Ave eng...nope, that is miles, 167,000 kms or so and brakes original. Sorta scary isn't it.

Craig B

I'm at 87k miles and my front pads are still over 50% easily. Just replaced my rears for the first time a month or so ago.

Wow, that's pretty good mileage on the OEMs. Even the rears are the same?

Well, you must either do a ton of highway driving, or brake Flintstone style at lower speeds.

As stated, you have lots of time after that light comes on. I too got paranoid and changed everything, but I could have easily stretched another 4-5K out of them.

I'm at 91K miles and the fronts have 40% left, the light comes on WAY early. Mines been on for 3K miles. I could EASILY go another 30K on the pads.

1st set of rear were going at 25K miles. Second set was changed at 35K since I didn't have rotors the first time around. I switched to Pagid pads and they have 50% left almost 60K later.

Ave eng....nope, rears went at 100,000km's. I am going to do all 4 when I do them next week or so.

I got curious and measured, with the light on, I am still well above minimum in manual....280 tho, I measured at 310 or so.

I also hate the light, a quick shunt in the connector took care of that.

Craig B

Coming from a Jetta 1.8T I can say that the engine braking effect is much stronger in all gears on the TDI, so I'll bet that has a lot to do with the absurdly long brake pad life.

My light came on on a Friday night and scared the drop outta me....thought something was seriously wrong bc of never seen that warning .....and immediately brakes felt wrong or pushed deeper the pedal lower....or so I thought maybe I panicked in my mind.
Checked today and brake light not on anymore when turned it on a while....while I read the manual and saw the warning light page...


Haven't driven it more to see but having read your comments, glad to know I have time to maybe let the VW diesel guru do the brakes when doing the now due timing belt too...


And, btw, I'm at 116k miles...original brakes all around...

In my opinion the brake sensor light is not much good as a reliable indicator. All my cars I just take and short out the wires to keep the light off. I have had pad sensors fail when the pad is still good. The wire is only on one pad and there are 7 others. If the light is off it can give a false sense of the condition of the other pads. Where I live there is a lot of rust and sometimes one pad can be destroyed and the others are fine. The best solution is to rotate the tires according to schedule and inspect all the pads visually at that time. For those that live where roads are not salted the pads may wear evenly and a caliper may not jamb up but to me, a wire on just one pad makes no sense and there is no sensor on the rears at all that often wear at a different rate than the front.

I agree with Tgray -- I've seen on both my ALH and other vehicles, some mine and some friends cars that they've asked me to look at, where you can get a slider stick a bit and then one side of one caliper will wear materially faster than the other. The only way to catch that unless you get "1 of 8" odds and it's the one with the wire in it is to rotate the tires regularly and look while the wheels are off -- otherwise you will "catch" it when the grinding starts.

Never mind that on the MkIvs at least the rears wear at about double the rate of the fronts and of course there's no sensor there.