Received the inspection report from LR yesterday and would appreciate your feedback please:

The car is an HSE AB SDV6 2015.5 and has covered 29k miles.

Brakes Pads have 7mm all around. I was surprised they are wearing so evenly.

Brake Discs
Front - 32mm
Rear - 24mm

How thick are they new please and how much wear/life is left?

Appreciate your thoughts please. thanks

The front pads are twice the thickness of the rear ones when new, so it is about right that they are even thickness now, given that the front does most of the braking. They tend to wear out together in my experience. It is an old fashioned rule of thumb that you should not wear the pads thinner than the thickness of the pad back plate, probably about 5-6 mm. So they are alright for another couple of thousand miles, but you should probably plan for replacement sometime soon.

The brake disc thickness given is fairly meaningless. Discs develop a taper from the bell to the circumference as they wear, so it would be more helpful to give an inner and outer reading. What is more important is the surface condition, ie, are they heavily scored, pitted, cracked, corroded, etc.

I know many people will replace pads and keep running the original discs, but I tend to change pads and discs together these days. The reason is that asbestos free pads tend to wear the disc much more than the pads of yore. A disc with taper, or scoring will take much longer to bed the replacement pads than a new one and may lead to a long brake pedal travel. Since brake discs are much cheaper than they used to be (because of the volumes being replaced), although you may not think it when you get a quote !!; I save myself the time of cleaning the old discs and the uncertainty of bedding-in by changing all the discs and pads together. My justification is that I do the work myself, so it is cheap, and it is my car, so I deserve it!!

By the way, replacing discs and pads is a non-specialist job. There is no need for main dealer pricing for that work. Any sensible independent garage will do just as good a job for you.

Thank you for all the information.

I was told that the pads are less than 40% worn - why would I only get a couple of thousand miles from them?

Hmm, if 7mm constitutes 60%, that suggests that the new pad is 11.6mm thick. I thought from memory that the rear was about that thickness and the front nearly double that. But it is a while since I looked at mine.

You can continue to run them until the pad warning light comes on, in any case. The sensors are sacrificial and are renewed with the pads.

The pad warning light comes on with about 3mm left on the pad, if I remember correctly. My TDV8 threw up the warning light on my trip down to Spain last year and, 1000 miles later, we changed them in the camp site. There was enough left to have got home if I'd decided to push it but I'd have wanted to have been very gentle with the brakes. 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

Thanks. I was told they are approx 10mm when new.