Well, that's a tad annoying...

This morning, on the way in to work the car developed a grinding sound, under braking, from the nearside front.

Luckily I was near our Fiat main dealer and the car is almost due for its 2 year/24000 service. So I limped it there and booked it in (they were looking at it today and servicing it if they had a slot, otherwise service tomorrow).

Anyway, rang up at close of play today and had a chat. The nearside front brake pads were worn down to metal and the disc has been damaged. Also The front two tyres and one of the rears were pretty much down to minimum tread.

The car has done 23500 miles and the last service was 11 months ago. I know that I'm not a heavy braker - my driving style is pretty smooth, I'm getting 50+ mpg out of it too.

Anyway, here's my thoughts - how could a front brake have got so bad in the space of 11 months and how come the tyres are only lasting 24000?

Wonder if I've got a shot at a warranty claim for the brakes or at least a claim against the garage for not picking up the wear and tear last service?

Car is a 59 plate 1.1 Active Eco - don't think it's too 'eco'nomical if the tyres are shot after 24k!

Any thoughts on the best/most hardwaring/economical replacement tyres?

Brakes, surely you must have had a sticky caliper or something. They may have been fine at the last service. Can't hurt to ask about the warranty though. They've worn well before their time.

Tyres, 'only' 24K? That's twice what I got out of the fronts on mine!
Admittedly the tracking was off which seems to be a standard feature on Pandas, but with fixed tracking the second set didn't look like they were going to last a huge length of time either.
The rears seemed to be wearing more than I expected too.

I've had around 40k out of previous tyres on other cars, I guess that's why the 24k surprised me.

It's the brake thing that's my biggest concern, though - don't think it's going to be a cheap service. If I hadn't been almost passing when the problem hit then I'd be going to our local garage...

I honestly think 24K out of a set of front tyres is frankly amazing! I thought I had done incredibly well to get 14K out of mine though they really were getting marginal by that point.

As for front pads, mine were still okay but I knew they were low at 27K in my old 100hp. I think that's perfectly acceptable really.

I really don't think you've got a hope in hell with a warranty claim for that.

Cliffo said:

... Any thoughts on the best/most hardwaring/economical replacement tyres?

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Brakes & tyres are `consumables’ – so I doubt the service manager will feel challenged over those elements to leave his morning bacon butty.

You might reasonably have got caught for brake pads & two front tyres. But looks like n/s/f brake parts have been doing most of the work. If respected I’d argue the brakes should go on a few years. But most I believe wouldn’t be too disappointed to get 24K miles out of their front tyres – although the rear rubber can sometimes craze over with old age before the tread wears out.

Tyres come in basically four levels – the v/good (premier class), the good (mid-range), the bad (1st tier budgets) & the ugly (2nd tier budgets). The “best”, “hardwearing” & “economical” can be contradictory – e.g. the “best” tend to perform in most categories, whereas the worst can’t hack-it beyond one category & fail in most. Check-out the tests – e.g. ADAC.

But thinking positive, for Panda size - a decent tyre will be <0.25p/mile for a 24K mile lifespan.

20111014

trackdayqueen said:

I honestly think 24K out of a set of front tyres is frankly amazing! I thought I had done incredibly well to get 14K out of mine though they really were getting marginal by that point.

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Yeah, I'm getting that impression

As for front pads, mine were still okay but I knew they were low at 27K in my old 100hp. I think that's perfectly acceptable really.

I really don't think you've got a hope in hell with a warranty claim for that.

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Hmm, the issue is that they've gone bad in slightly less than one service interval - there was no advisory last time and they've actually failed in a dangerous and damaging way. I expect to replace brake pads every so often, no problem with that, but I don't expect them to fail, catastrophically when, IMHO, they've not been abused and the car is being maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.

If they've failed due to a faulty caliper (which seems possible) then I think there's a reasonable shout of pushing for a warranty claim.

Caravadossi said:

Tyres come in basically four levels – the v/good (premier class), the good (mid-range), the bad (1st tier budgets) & the ugly (2nd tier budgets). The “best”, “hardwearing” & “economical” can be contradictory – e.g. the “best” tend to perform in most categories, whereas the worst can’t hack-it beyond one category & fail in most. Check-out the tests – e.g. ADAC.

But thinking positive, for Panda size - a decent tyre will be <0.25p/mile for a 24K mile lifespan.

20111014

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Cheers, I'll have a shop around

To be fair, they've worn out, not failed in the space of a year.

They also did not 'fail' nor was it 'dangerous', nor was it 'catastrophic' unless you think that a disc with a little groove in it is!

Really the onus is on you to check on how much pad you have left and then replace before you end up grinding the disc.

Sorry, but I'm stunned you think this is unacceptable.


Remember it's a Fiat.

trackdayqueen said:

To be fair, they've worn out, not failed in the space of a year.

They also did not 'fail' nor was it 'dangerous', nor was it 'catastrophic' unless you think that a disc with a little groove in it is!

Really the onus is on you to check on how much pad you have left and then replace before you end up grinding the disc.

Remember it's a Fiat.

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Hmm, I think your definition of worn out and my definition of failure have some common ground. I reckon it is fairly catastrophic when a safety system fails in a dangerous manner - grinding the disc with a bare metal 'pad' is not safe by any stretch of the imagination.

Yes, the onus may be on me to check the brake wear, and, on a self serviced car I would be, however my point still stands - this failure occurred *within a service interval* and without an advisory from the previous service. I (probably naively) believed that the garage had done my brake checks for me.

Again, I know I'm not a heavy brake user - I've not had to change a set of pads at less than 24k even on my bike!

Pads and discs can probably be had for 40-50 pounds for both so there's no real excuse not to do them yourself Bit of copperslip in the right places and you'll be good to go.

The discs on something like a Panda are probably only good for one set of pads anyway

With tyres and brakes there's no way of the dealership telling how gentle or rough you've been with the car.

306maxi said:

Pads and discs can probably be had for 40-50 pounds for both so there's no real excuse not to do them yourself Bit of copperslip in the right places and you'll be good to go.

The discs on something like a Panda are probably only good for one set of pads anyway

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Don't worry - as soon as the Warranty's out of date then it's self service all the way!

With tyres and brakes there's no way of the dealership telling how gentle or rough you've been with the car.

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I'm accepting the group wisdom with regards to the tyres, however they said that there was nothing particularly amiss with the rest of the brakes which rather points to the fact that there's a problem with only one of them showing abnormal wear and failing ...

You can do your brakes yourself Only issue will be if you do them wrong and tbh it's pretty easy to do the brakes on a Panda/500.

306maxi said:

You can do your brakes yourself Only issue will be if you do them wrong and tbh it's pretty easy to do the brakes on a Panda/500.

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Brakes yes, but wouldn't doing the caliper affect any warranty claim I may have to make?

Cliffo said:

Brakes yes, but wouldn't doing the caliper affect any warranty claim I may have to make?

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On the caliper if you've done something wrong, yes. But you can't really stuff it up unless you have no idea what you're doing

trackdayqueen said:

To be fair, they've worn out, not failed in the space of a year.

They also did not 'fail' nor was it 'dangerous', nor was it 'catastrophic' unless you think that a disc with a little groove in it is!

Really the onus is on you to check on how much pad you have left and then replace before you end up grinding the disc.

Sorry, but I'm stunned you think this is unacceptable.


Remember it's a Fiat.

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Totally agree - except for the last bit - it's a car. In this situation, brakes aren't 100 percent one moment and failed the next. You're suggesting that a garage should change your brake pads and, possibly, discs on the basis that they might wear out in the next 12 months - makes driving a very expensive pastime.

306maxi said:

You can do your brakes yourself Only issue will be if you do them wrong and tbh it's pretty easy to do the brakes on a Panda/500.

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I`m a complete novice, but reasonably intelligent. Is there a layman's guide anywhere to change brake dics & pads? Or is it best leaving to a garage?

How can you tell when they need doing?

Just Google it, am sure there's loads out there.

It's not hard to do, have done it to lots of different cars over the years. Having the right tools (brake pipe spanner) for everything makes all the difference.

Ok, thanks for the info

Jerseywurzel said:

I`m a complete novice, but reasonably intelligent. Is there a layman's guide anywhere to change brake dics & pads? Or is it best leaving to a garage?

How can you tell when they need doing?

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Take a look in the Punto and Seicento guides as both have guides for the pads. Theres bound to be something about discs on the Sei forum as people are always uprating on there!