Mark: Hi, it's Mark from TLR. I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. Vancouver's best auto service experience and 24 times they've won best auto repair in Vancouver as voted by their customers. And we're talking cars. How are you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing well.
Mark: So today's victim is a 2016 Range Rover Sport Supercharged that had brake issues. What was going on with this vehicle?
Bernie: Yeah. So the vehicle came to our shop for a maintenance service and the owner had some concerns about the brakes and figured they needed to be replaced.
Mark: So how do you go about diagnosing that?
Bernie: Well, we basically do an inspection on the vehicle and a brake inspection. We found that the brake pads and rotors were worn down to a point of needing to be replaced. Front and rear.
Mark: So, what kind of parts do you replace typically? Do you just do the pads when you're doing a brake job?
Bernie: Pads and rotors you know, when the pads wear out, we do the rotors at the same time. There's a misconception, you just changed the brake pads. Not a good idea. I mean, you can, but we'll look at some pictures in a few minutes and you'll see why it's definitely not a good idea to change just the pads. I mean, it'll work, but you're working with a rotor that's really substandard. And that definitely will not give you the braking you need.
Mark: And what other parts might be changed? That depends on the condition in the brake system.
Bernie: Yeah. Well, one thing we do with Range Rovers, and this is typical with a lot of European cars, is we changed the pad wear sensors. So there are I believe on this one, there's one in the front, one in the rear.
So these are basically an electrical item that will send a signal to the vehicle when the brake pads are worn to a certain point, that you need to change your brake pads. And I believe that the warning light was on, on this vehicle. We do get a lot of European vehicles that come to our shop where you know, the owners say, Hey, my brake pad warning light is on.
And I find it's a pretty good system, not a hundred percent reliable when a vehicle gets really old because not every pad is monitored. There are some vehicles actually that have every brake pad monitored, but it's pretty rare. So you may have more wear on one side or maybe the inner pads worn more than the other. And it just indicated at an early enough time.
Mark: And what about all the other parts in the braking system?
Bernie: Well, the brake calipers or something that often needs to be replaced, but in this case we don't. They're not due for needing to be done in this vehicle for probably quite some time. We do a lot of Range Rover brakes. A lot of Land Rover brakes. Rarely change calipers, but once they get old, I'm saying like, you know, 15, 20 years old, things like calipers will need to be replaced. And it's a good thing. These are big calipers. They're multi piston, they're expensive. So if you can avoid replacing them, that's all the better.
We're looking at this beautiful 2016 Range Rover Sport, very sporty looking vehicle. And it certainly goes well.
Here's our view of the front brakes before we replaced them. There's the rotor. There are grooves at the edges here, and I've got the rears picture that shows this a little better. But when the rotor's new, if you could look at where my mouse pointer is moving here, this is how thick the rotor is. So a lot of material wears away on these. The pad you can sort of barely see in the background here is pretty thin. And this big red thing., This is a brake caliper. I think it's a six piston caliper so that, you know, multi piston caliper is very expensive to replace if you ever need to, but they're generally pretty reliable.
Here's a view of the front brakes with the new rotor on. You can see the surface is completely flat, these are like a sort of an aluminum finished powder finish coded at which wears off. New pads. Again, there's your caliper, Brembo brakes, high-performance braking system.
And there's the brake pad. These things use huge brake pads. I'm actually holding this in my hand and you know, my hand is pretty large. And these are just a humongous brake pad. It's amazing that they wear out very quickly in spite of the size.
There's a view of the rear brakes before replacement. Again, you can see these grooves at the edges of the rotors. This one just uses a single piston caliper on the rear. So it's a very different design, but still very effective for braking.
And there is a sort of close up view of the rear brake rotor and these arrows point to the grooves, this is the thickness of the rotor was when the brake pads were new. And it's worn down substantially in the middle. And this is why you don't want to just put brake pads in because this rotor is already down to it's where limit thickness. So you know, if you put another set of brake pads in, this rotor will be substantially thinner by the time the brakes wear out and not as effective at braking the vehicle. Stopping your vehicle I should say.
Mark: Basically because that metal has been worn away is just, the rotor won't dissipate heat properly anymore. Exactly. Exactly. As soon as the brakes get hot, you lose braking power.
Bernie: And that's the whole thing with brakes is it's about dissipating the heat as fast as possible. And of course, that's a complete waste of energy, which is the really, you know, one of the strong points of electric vehicles or hybrids where you're capturing that energy and reusing it. That's, you know, to me, probably one of the best benefits of them. Not the pollutants that it doesn't make out the back, but the reuse of the energy is really you know, it's smart.
Mark: So what about the brake fluid on this vehicle? Did that need to be replaced?
Bernie: Yeah, we replaced it. Generally brake fluid is it's good to replace it about every two to three years. This vehicle's a 2016. So that's six years. Thank you. We do these early in the morning. So thinking isn't always as good as it could be. Yeah. Six years old. This is our first service on this vehicle that we've done for this customer, but if it's been well-maintained it's probably been done at least once before.
Mark: So we've done quite a few brake videos on Range Rovers. It's a high-performance SUV was a lot of horsepower, a lot of performance, et cetera, really big brakes. How long do they usually last on these vehicles?
Bernie: Well, not that long. This is actually this clients second brake service and this vehicle has a little over 60,000 kilometres, which is about 40,000 miles. So they really don't last very long. And this has kind of been typical of a lot of these larger European SUV's. Audi Q7s were, you know, you'd be lucky to get 30,000 Ks out of a set of brakes on those. Same with a lot of Range Rovers and Land Rovers. Audi's seemed to be a lot better.
They seem to get probably 60 to 70 before you need to do a set of brakes. You know, some Range Rovers and Land Rovers last longer too. But for some reason, this one seems to be only good for about 30 or so, which is a very expensive service. So, you know, we often talk, how reliable are these vehicles? Well, they are reliable, but you do have to spend a lot of extra money to enjoy the ride.
Mark: Enjoy all that supercharged performance.
Bernie: It's a great vehicle. I mean, for a five or 6,000 pound SUV, it moves really fast and stops well, and you know, it's a beautiful ride for sure.
Mark: If you're looking for service for your Range Rover or Land Rover in Vancouver, the guys to see are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment, or you can book online at pawlikautomotive.com. They'll call you. They'll check out what you think is going on or what the symptoms are. They'll get ready for when you actually show up for your appointment. If you want more information, there's tons of videos on the pawlikautomotive.com website. We've been doing this for 10 years. There's close to a thousand. Also on our YouTube channel. Pawlik Auto Repair. We thank you very much for watching and enjoying us and putting up with our silliness for many years. And of course all Bernie's expertise on cars. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thanks Mark. Thanks for watching.
