Apparently warped at 20k miles. This car is a creampuff driven very moderately by my wife to commute (98% Freeway, 16 mi. each way) to work.
Seems the brakes are out of warranty @ 1 year/12k. Bummer.
Still, 20k miles IMO is a bit young for such problems.
Does anyone have info/insights, knowledge of "known issues", Service Bulletins, etc? Thanks!
Not sure about Passats specifically but fast brake wear is a common topic on the Yahoo ev_update forum for Eurovans too. My guess is that VW uses soft-ish compounds on the pads (dusty and wear fast but stop well) and the rotor linings more often than not are too thin to be re-used after normal use and are usually just replaced rather than turned. People with Eurovans have been going through brake pads and rotors about every 20-25K miles too.
This is rotors tho... you should be able to get IMO 100K Kms easy out of rear rotors (we have original rear brakes (not the pads/shoes tho) on all our cars: 140K Kms 1993 Volvo 960 (original front brake rotors, one new rear caliper (leak, not seized)), 76K Kms 1999 Golf TDI (original front brake rotors as well) and ~55-80K Kms (we aren't sure about our 91 Golf, the odo broke, and we guesstimate its KMs, the rear drum is the ONLY brake component still left on this car... front rotors are set two due to a failed caliper that ate the rotor, one new set of shoes, two new sets of pads, new slave cylinders on two of the wheels))
A lot of my friends drive VW's and their rear brake wear isn't excessive. Two people I used to work with had Passats (one a W8) and no one had any issues with brakes, all with more KMs then the poster reported.
One question - what is a "creampuff" is this a car that is driven very daintily by someone?? If so that could be the cause, people who drive light tend to brake early and use brakes excessively. The Passat is able to send more brake power to the rear disks in this case due to EBFD, this could be why the rear disks are warped.
Slightly off topic, but that Volvo I mentioned we have with 140K Kms, I should mention we also tow an unbraked 1800lb tent trailer with it (not all the time, but some summer vacations)... We have done the pads at 118K Kms and that one rear caliper at 129K Kms... no warped rotors, no squeals, powerfull brakes for such an old car. That is good service life for brakes! The VW's seem to go through brakes more frequently, but their parts aren't as expensive, you probably don't want to know how much pads for that Volvo are.
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