Dear All,

I live in Brazil, where car dealerships in general are not very trustworthy and charge exorbitant prices for the simplest of services (e.g. upwards of $100 just to change the oil, i.e. excluding the price of the oil itself)

Anyway, I was told by one of these dealerships that my brake pads are running thin. However, the on-board computer has not notified me of any imminent problems with my pads. In fact, it tells me I would not need to change the pads for at least another 10K miles.

I was reading about Mini's Condition Based Service and how it uses sensors to monitor the wear of a few items (such as the brake pads) and I was wondering: can I trust Mini's CBS system (i.e. does it have sensors that actually read how worn the pads are)?

N.B. I will have the pads checked regardless, but I wanted to know a little bit more about how the CBS system works.

Best,

Peter

 

Dont trust it.

The only sensors the brakes have are the pad wear sensor, and its only activated when the pad has worn down enough that the sensor starts rubbing the rotor, when activated it will give you a clear warning that you you need to head to a dealership asap for brake service.

Just to be safe, check your pads yourself and make sure the wear sensors are there to begin with.

 

They've had problems with the software calculating the brake life. Make sure your car is up to date for that. Best of course is visual or tactile feel. My rears are starting to squeal a bit and the counter is about 1500 miles left, so I'm pretty sure I'm near time to change the pads/rotors.

 

When I was in a couple of weeks ago for 30k check they told me I needed to schedule and drop off for 4hrs so I hey could reload the software. They said I get get some incorrect readings for brakes.