I was thinking about how a couple of months ago, my rear brakepads wore out before my fronts. Do the rears have a tendency to work harder under normal driving? I noticed the same occurance with two other cars. In one particular occasion, a Jetta I was looking at had rear pads that were all the way down to the wear indicators, yet the fronts looked extremely beefy with plenty of life left. I can almost say the same about my car. I still had good life left on my fronts, yet my rear pads were totally gone.

So what I'm getting at is, should we start paying more attention to our rear brakes? I notice many people have upgraded the fronts only and slack off a little on the rears. For instance, get some pads that have serious bite, such as Porterfields, up front and some tame AEM's on the rears.

 

http://www.turnfast.com
REALLY REALLY BIG (and really really good) braking section about how important the rear brakes are..

 

nice link! (see sig)

 

That was some extremely good reading. I can't believe I've never read that article before.

But it still doesn't explain why rear pads on some cars wear out faster than the fronts.