Estimated life of brakes and other components

Pads and rotors last less than 25,000 miles on the ES300. I guess that is about the same on an LS. And that is only if the ES is driven by a little old lady on her way to church and her womens clubs and to the beauty parlor and grocery store. Lord only Knows what the life would be if a real serious driver drove one.

There is no kilometer limit in the break system. Usually it is the amount and type of braking than breaks the break system.

This old lady is most likely continuously pressing the break pedal and heating up the breaks. Do not drag the breaks, or the break system will be too hot, and pad material will be deposited on rotors.

Street pads have a low functional temperature range. If you get them too hot, break pad material will be deposited on the surface of the rotors. Because of this, rotors will appear warped. If you get a set of race pads, your car will not stop at all if the breaks are cold. Even if you know this and could preheat the breaks or apply the immensive amount of pressure that cold breaks need, your wife or someone else would be in big trouble with the car. This is why race pads are no good in normal traffic. Accidents are more costly than break system repairs due to missuse, thus all the sensible manufactures use street pads in normal cars.

Once there is a thin layer of deposited pad material on the rotors, the rotors will have a worse thermal transfers characteristics in that area. This means, that once you have overheated the pads for some times, you have started the thermal spiral, where it is always a bit easier to get the pads overheated.

Because there is no miracle cure available, you should learn to drive in a way that heats the pads less. Usually, that should also give a lower fuel consumption. I remember once driving an trip of 170 km between two cities without breaking at all before reaching destination. Of course, that is not usually possible, but accelerating wildly and then breaking vigoriously at every stop light will destroy a properly designed break system in any modern street car. Pads will mell and rotors will appear "warped" due to pad material deposits on the rotors.

Get your acceleration and deceleration experiences in a theme park (or on a race track with a car with race pads) and drive more sensibly in the normal traffic and your break system will last longer. You still need to replace pads every now and then, but rotors are something you destroy by missuse.

Please, check out this site about break systems:

You're kidding I hope. On my 95 Mercury Grand Marquis, I changed the front pads for the 1st time at

60K. The front rotors at 75K. The 2nd time i replaced the front pads was at 115K The rear pads I just changed at 165K. Rear rotors are still good.

On my daughter's 91 Camry I just replaced the front pads at 100K. Rotors are fine. Rears are too.

On my 2001 Tacoma with 40K I haven't changed anything yet.

I would think the ES would be on par with the Camry.

And here I was thinking about buying an ES soon...

I suspect you are talking about city driving. It is not unusual for a properly driven car that drives mainly on the highway to get significantly higher mileage before brake and rotor work are necessary.

We had a similar experience with a RX 300 which needed the rear brakes replaced at 30k. Cost $350.00.