Brake pads

Our small (24 foot) 2005 E450 Class C motorhome has 73K+ miles on it - with the original front brake pads that my mechanic measures as still OK.

I attribute this long front brake pad life to at least these two things:

1. Underloading of the E450 chassis in that our small rig is usually built on the E350 chassis. The E450 chassis has larger brake swept areas than those of the E350 chassis.

2. I try to travel most of the time with it's transmission in Tow/Haul mode. In this mode, engine braking is used when slowing for any reason, plus whenever traveling downhill. This reduces wear of the front (and rear) brake pads over time.

This may or may not help but I have the complete service records for my Former Rental and every time it was serviced after a rental and before the next one one of the many things that were checked was the brake wear and it was recorded.

Their criteria before sale was if they were 50% or less they were replaced,my records show that they were replaced at 56293 miles and again at 86560 miles,when I purchased the RV it had 91000 miles on it.

My 32' Winnie had 46,000 miles on the original pads. I was getting some rust pitting on the inside of the rotors along with some glazing causing the annoying low speed squeak, so I replaced the rotors and pads. The original pads still had about half material left. BTW, replaced the pads with EBC "green" , very happy with them.

blownstang01 wrote:
.......I was getting some rust pitting on the inside of the rotors along with some glazing .......

That is typical with all vehicles sitting around for extended periods, especially when kept outdoors.