Aston Martin Rapide Brakes

[toby8239]

Hi All,

Took my 2011 Aston Rapide in for a service / MOT this week and was hit with some interesting facts. As some background; I purchased the car 3k miles ago (9 months), and just prior to my ownership it had a full MOT (no advisories) and was just out of Aston warranty.

During the service the chap came out and said;

- Front discs and pads are 85-90% worn - I have no warning lights on, and seeing as I've done 3k (town miles) I'm surprised no advisories where on the last MOT
- Rear discs and pads are 75-80% worn
- Lots of other stuff (shocks etc) that total another £2+k

All in all they wanted the best part of 7k£ for the work.

Fair enough if they need doing I'll get them done, but does anybody have any experience of where to possibly locate more reasonably priced parts - Scudaria seem good but wondering if anybody knows of any other places??

Thanks in advance.

[toby8239]

Here's a pic of the front brake pads

[Gday2]

Wear looks like they said. Pads should be changed when down to about 2.5 mm and yours look like that. Disks look like the lost 1mm each side which is the point to change them.

There are lots of aftermarket parts available, some cheap some more expensive, all with different features. In the end it comes down to personal taste and how you want to drive your car.

Cheers

Christian

[toby8239]

Thanks.

I try the car 4-5k a year and light, town driving mostly.

Where do you look for parts - apart from scud I am unable to locate anywhere on the web that sells aftermarket.

[Jon39]

There seems to be a lot of disc changing in recent times. Years ago it was rarely mentioned.

One of my cars is an old, but still in beautiful condition Merdedes-Benz, always serviced by a main dealer. About ten years ago during a service, they told me the front pads and discs needed replacement. I replied, "Fit new pads, but not discs".

The car has regularly been in their workshop during the subsequent ten years, and worn discs have never been mentioned again.

Do you think that I rumbled their 'little game'?

Is there an engineering reason, why discs wear more now than in the 'old days'?

Edited by Jon39 on Saturday 11th August 11:03

[toby8239]

It's a great question.

I also own a 2014 E63 AMG, which also needed new front discs/pads after 17k miles. When each disc is £500 I'd expect better - especially as it had easy miles.

Compared to an 2007 S Type R I had previously on which discs and pads were never mentioned...

[DB531]

This link may help.

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=17...

Fitting pads, is reasonably straight forward should you wish to replace them yourself. Wear indicators if needed, are common to the V8Vantage, just be very careful when removing the sensor if it is not worn through.
Discs/rotors may be a little more tricky to find outside the dealer network. If you do replace the disks You may require a resetting tool for the handbrake pads.

[ruhall]

Jon39 said:

There seems to be a lot of disc changing in recent times. Years ago it was rarely mentioned.

One of my cars is an old, but still in beautiful condition Merdedes-Benz, always serviced by a main dealer. About ten years ago during a service, they told me the front pads and discs needed replacement. I replied, "Fit new pads, but not discs".

The car has regularly been in their workshop during the subsequent ten years, and worn discs have never been mentioned again.

Do you think that I rumbled their 'little game'?

Is there an engineering reason, why discs wear more now than in the 'old days'?

Edited by Jon39 on Saturday 11th August 11:03

My understanding is that the composition of pads over the years has changed (no asbestos etc) and the newer compositions are harder on the discs. A rule of thumb now seems to be new discs every other set of pads.

Having said that, driving style, pad composition (aftermarket etc), whether car is garaged, disc quality, use of electric hold/parking brakes etc can all have an impact. It doesn't seem unusual now for people to report the need for new rear pads on a regular basis, which wasn't the case before electric parking brakes etc..

Comments are generalisations and not Aston Martin specific.

[Phil74891]

Looks like they’ll need replacing sooner rather than later.

I would call one or two of the well known Independent Aston specialists and ask them how much for the complete job.

FWIW I just had the pads and disks replaced on my 11year old RS4. Used a specialist, it cost 2k total using OEM parts.

[telum01]

Bottom line is that the factory brakes are designed to handle the speeds the car *can* reach. These cars can do around 200 mph, and the brakes need to be able to handle hard braking from those speeds. That means the factory pads are very aggressive, and with those aggressive pads comes the drawbacks of brake dust, brake squeal, and excessive rotor wear (replacing rotors every time the pads are replaced is incredibly excessive). The vast majority of Aston owners will never hit speeds that high, and thus don't need brakes that aggressive. It's why so many people are happy to switch to pads that are more appropriate for the driver's actual needs. Huge reductions in brake squeal, brake dust, and rotor wear, which is what most people want - so long as they aren't trying to do repeated stops from 130+ mph. (EDIT: On the Rapide and other cars with 6-piston front calipers, even a more mild pad will be just fine, the 130 mph repeated hard stopping is applicable to the earlier cars with 4-piston front calipers.)

Edited by telum01 on Monday 13th August 13:18

[Ken Figenus]

Did you manage to source the Rapide disks for a more reasonable price at all? I need to start looking for a pair and they are over £1000 for just brake disks

[LTP]

Jon39 said:

There seems to be a lot of disc changing in recent times. Years ago it was rarely mentioned.

One of my cars is an old, but still in beautiful condition Merdedes-Benz, always serviced by a main dealer. About ten years ago during a service, they told me the front pads and discs needed replacement. I replied, "Fit new pads, but not discs".

The car has regularly been in their workshop during the subsequent ten years, and worn discs have never been mentioned again.

Do you think that I rumbled their 'little game'?

Is there an engineering reason, why discs wear more now than in the 'old days'?

I doubt that they have a "little game" although many dealerships will advise on mileage and a visual check rather than actual measurement, and have to be conservative to avoid negligence claims if your discs go below the minimum between services. Remember they don't know if you drive everywhere at 30 and coast to a halt or regularly stop hard from high speed when fully-loaded. It's easy to check: measure the thickness in the working area of the disc with a micrometer and work out if there's enough material left to ensure the thickness will not be below the minimum before the next service based on your anticipated usage. Then check visually for any cracks or deep scoring. If you pass both tests, you don't need discs. Ideally you'll check disc thickness at services so you can calculate wear vs mileage over time.

As for why do they wear more there's several reasons: the removal of asbestos, the increasing weight of vehicles, the increasing speed of vehicles (the brakes have to cope with GVW and Vmax, irrespective of speed limits) and the fact that OEMs will not over-spec brakes unless they have to as that costs them money and adds unsprung mass.

edited to add
A few years ago when I came to fit my winter wheels/tyres to my old Volvo V70 I found the alloy wheels had partially "welded" to the steel hubs. As I'd had the car serviced by a main dealer only a few weeks prior and had been advised that the rear discs were worn and needed changing (plus new pads) I was a little surprised, so I phoned the service department and was amazed to learn that, for Volvo at least, unless they are actually changing discs or pads they don't take the wheels off at an annual service. So there's no way did they measure disc thicknesses. So I pulled the wheels off and measured the discs myself to find that they were right - the discs were nearly on bottom limit. As an aside, I used to reckon on about 40k - 50k miles for a set of discs on the V70 and I tend to drive briskly and brake quite hard.

Edited by LTP on Saturday 21st November 17:38

[Riddochg]

I got new discs for my Vantage about a year ago. Original Brembo. It was from a firm recommended on here called Autodoc. £343 for all four including delivery. They came from Germany! Order arrived within a few days of payment.

[V8V Pete]

Riddochg said:

I got new discs for my Vantage about a year ago. Original Brembo. It was from a firm recommended on here called Autodoc. £343 for all four including delivery. They came from Germany! Order arrived within a few days of payment.

Very different discs on the 4-pot caliper front brake cars compared to the 6-pot ones and sold at very different prices.

[robt350c]

I'd be interested also to know if anyone has found an economically pallatable source for the rapide s front discs, are they unique to the rapide or used on other cars? At least we know the rears are db9 fronts, aren't they?

[Ken Figenus]

I had thought that Rapide rears are indeed DB9 fronts but am absolutely not 100% on it - I think someone posted it may not be the case, just as someone else posted it was! It is worth further investigation though as there is a big saving to be made getting them from Brembo. My rears are OK so won't be investigating just yet.

[toby8239]

In the end I went and bought discs from Scudaria Car Parts, expensive but not really much more so than AMG's etc. In terms of pads, I ended up going to porterfields - pads were better, far less dusty.

[8Tech]

One reason for getting reports of discs and pads on service is the labour time charged compared to the labour time taken. With that huge difference, technicians on bonus will get a couple of hours wages for a 20 minute job and the dealership is happy with that because the customer also pays that higher time labour rate.

Thats why is is so common at fast fit outlets to report discs and pads when you go in for tyres on a "normal" daily driver type car.

With air tools, a ramp, and the car already in the workshop and in the air for service, it will take around 5 to 10 minutes per wheel to do discs and pads, whats the labour charge the dealer gets?

[vernierMike]

8Tech said:

One reason for getting reports of discs and pads on service is the labour time charged compared to the labour time taken. With that huge difference, technicians on bonus will get a couple of hours wages for a 20 minute job and the dealership is happy with that because the customer also pays that higher time labour rate.

Thats why is is so common at fast fit outlets to report discs and pads when you go in for tyres on a "normal" daily driver type car.

With air tools, a ramp, and the car already in the workshop and in the air for service, it will take around 5 to 10 minutes per wheel to do discs and pads, whats the labour charge the dealer gets?

I'm also sure there are some scare tactics with 'safety items sir/madam' and also, maybe, the aspect of advising things that might come back to bite the operator should th worst happen, in this litigious world. Discs are an easy change with a few tools and an impact wrench for this damned screws.

Interested in the cost of the 6 pot discs as a possible upgrade from 4 pot Vantage...???

[Ken Figenus]

toby8239 said:

In the end I went and bought discs from Scudaria Car Parts, expensive but not really much more so than AMG's etc. In terms of pads, I ended up going to porterfields - pads were better, far less dusty.

I put Porterfields on my last Rapide. I wasn't mad keen on them tbh - needed more pedal pressure to operate and lacked the OEM pad's nice feel. Lots less dust though. Are you feeling any difference between them and OE? They are about £200 cheaper for fronts after all so an useful saving...