how often should i change my brakes?

[grassjelly]

I'm in the same boat. I have approximately 20,XXX miles and my steering wheel vibrates during braking above 60mph. And as Dave-o expressed, I'm surprised this is an issue at this relatively early stage. I am assuming it's warped rotors, but I wonder if there is another underlying issue.

[desentrix]

excerpt fro: http://ask.metafilter.com/49335/Brak...e-the-calipers

"Brakes work by squeezing the rotors with the pads. Both the rotor and the pads are worn down over time. As they wear down, the pads and the rotors develop grooves together. If you simply replace the pads alone, you present a new and flat pad to the grooved rotor. This mismatch can greatly reduce brake performance. When they 'turn' a rotor, they are putting the rotor onto a lathe, and then cutting the faces of the rotor with a tool until the rotor is perfectly flat again. This makes the rotor and new pads match up again. The good news is that turning rotors isn't very expensive at all.

However, if the grooves are really deep, or if the rotors are already worn thin, then you can't turn them. It's because there isn't enough metal left to cut off the faces to make them flat again. At this point, you have to buy new rotors.

As for new calipers, I'm not sure why your mechanic believes they need to be replaced. I would ask why, and ask if it because of a defect or broken part, or if it is simply policy."

[omairtheman1]

with less then 50k miles on your rotors... unless you've been abusive to them... you dont really need to swap them out nor do you i think you have to shave them....

first of all it all depends on how you drive....

if your braking from 110 mph down to 60 then speeding back up as i do brakes dont last long and the rotors will warp...

but what people dont realize is that there are three killers to rotors... one is a bad rotor from the factory which develop hard spots which in turn mess up your braking system and will cause a slight shimmy under braking

second is high speed braking as described above

and third is braking and then going through a puddle where the water interacts with the rotor causing it to drop in temperature at an unnatural rate... which can also cause hard spots

hard spots are not curable because they just reappear after a few K miles... 3-4 to be exact...

if i where u and i saw this problem i would do either one of two things... throw new pads on there and just wait it out and just resurface it like that or change out my rotors and pads together....

all upto you