Tundra Front Brakes

I have 91,000 on the original 2002 brakes with no problem. Unless you do some extreme things with the truck such as a lot and I mean a lot of stop and go, I'd say the dealer was blowing smoke about it being "totally normal".

Just brake pads, or rotors, too?

ended up being rotors too as they said they were scored... I think I will e-mail Toyota about this... it seems a bit crazy IMO

Did you peek at the pads yourself? And, does anyone else drive the truck? Maybe someone who likes to ride the brakes? Or, even worse, a teenager? I'm a pretty brisk driver, but even so, I've got about half my pad thickness left on an 02 Tacoma with 41k miles.

My factory pads on my '03 Access Cab were gone at 40k. Inboard driver's pad was nearly in the metal... outboard and both passenger pads had maybe 3mm left.

Replacement pads (Toyota OEM) lasted until 80k... all four were even at about 2mm.

I replaced those with Wheeler's E-911 pads. I'm at 123k now (43k on the pads) and there's still over 5mm left, all wearing evenly.

--- Rich

Just checked my brakes on my 2004 D/C 2x4 with almost 21,000 on the clock and all is well. I think the front pads are about 1/2 worn, lots of friction material left, the rear brakes look new. You might want to get a second opinion because you may have a problem.

Chuck in Phoenix

22,000 miles seems a little early, but brake life depends very much on the driver, payload, and type of usage. I had one freind who was a left foot braker. He drove with his left foot perched over the brake pedal. If you followed him he would drive you crazy becasue he was constantly flashing the brake lights because he was constantly just tapping the brakes when he hit small bumps. He could wear out a set of brake pads in 20,000 miles. I usually get at least 60k on a set of pads, but then I try to avoid using the brakes as much as possible. My sister routinely has pads last more than 80K miles (I think the front pads on her Civic made it to 97k miles).

If you are carrying a lot of heavy loads, and/or do a lot of stop and go driving, and/or do a lot of high performance driving, you can expect shorter pad life. If you want longer pad life, anticiapte stops and slow down without the brakes as you approach them. Try to avoid a lot of full tilt stops. I suspect you are a high performance driver who likes to brake firmly when coming to an intersection. If you are driving around empty, the front brakes are probably doing almost all the work when you stop firmly. With your old Discovery, the rear brakes probably provided a larger percentage of the force needed to stop the truck (becasue there was a larger percentage of the total weight on the rear axle), and therefore you spread the wear over the front and rear brakes better than with a lightly loaded pick-up.

Ed

It turns out my rear brakes were not working well at all and they had to order in new drums and other parts to fix the fault. I suspect this is the reason for premature front brake wear. So one of your hypotheses was correct - that is: the front brakes were doing a disproportional amount of the work.