- :
- 2022 2.5GT
I am indeed very happy with the performance of the OEM brakes on my bmw. They are quite overachieving in terms of performance for the average daily driver and are very well suited to aggressive driving with excellent pedal feel and ridiculously good stopping power. One thing I really like about these brakes is that taking a peek through your wheel, you can easily see how much pad you have leftand the rotor surface is very easy to inspect as well. Ive tried checking how much pad is left on the Mazda and it wasnt as easy... These brakes are so much more messy then Mazdas, but the performance and stopping power is exponentially higher. It seems like everyones Mazda brakes are wearing at different paces, but they seem to last long. Ours still work just fine.
Ive read somewhere that in place where salt is used during the winter, apparently this causes your rear brakes to wear out quicker or something? I dont remember the details, but I just remember its important to regularly service your caliper pins with grease if you live in an area that sees salt during the winter. This will prolong the life of your rear brakes.
Something Ive been noticing more and more lately and really dissapoints me is a large number of mechanics these days seemingly being lazy and not putting brakes on properly. Ive seen it on more then one car where the rotor is put on crooked which results in reduced stopping power and this terrible uneven wear which slashed the life of your brakes considerably. The original brakes on my BMW were so unevenly worn, the outer rotor was completely gone while the inner bit still had onenty of life left... anyways, my mechanic managed to salvage my rear brakes by resurfacing the rotor to make it even. the caliper pin needed to be lubed which was causing the rear brakes not to perform very well and some rust built up on the rotor. Needless to say, when all the brakes was serviced it made a HUGE difference. I recommend checking the brakes every 60k in salty or snowy areas...
So which brake method do you think is best overall, the Japanese way, or the German way where the rotor is sacrificed (to keep it clean for better contact to the pad? If I read your post correctly)
I mean, mazdas brakes work just fine, stopping power is at least proportionate to the grippy Yokohama tires I have on the car, the pedal is easy to modulate and the amount of dust is literally nothing compared to the German cars..
Both Mazda and Toyota caught a cold with long life pads, it cost them thousands in warranty claims. If a customer complains about brake judder, they have to stand the cost as it is a fault. If a customer wears a set of very excitable pads out in 6 months, he stands the cost! Both Mazda and Toyota have a kind of half way hybrid now that gives a reasonable balance and that is what you are experiencing on your 6. Which way is best? Well first you have to consider what causes wear. It is a direct effect of heat. In the first 12 months, I wore more than half my pad thickness away on my 2016.5 but I was happy with that because my journey to work is over some very long steep hills. The pads are bonded together with a resin system that degrades with heat - exponentially. At normal" city driving temperature it gives reasonable wear but if you double the temperature you start squaring up the wear and by about the time they get towards glowing, the wear is off the scale. That is why CX-5 owners see such a wide range of pad wear. It depends what you want. If you want really good performance and high friction you are almost certainly going to sacrifice life. Miss Daisy, pottering around barely getting any temperature would actually be better with the German pads as she can bring her standard pads to a standstill - friction material MUST see temperature to condition the pad surface. A sales rep who drives hard might be better with the Jap stuff as he will keep it active. Its horses for courses.