Obc says the rear brake pads need replacing approx 2000 miles bfore front ones anybody any idea why, brake dust suggests the rears do very little work

On my old E60 (at 24.000 km) the iDrive message was the same as you have!

Now with 2.300 km on my new one I have something like + 10,000 km more on the rear pads.

??? :help:

My Mar '04 build shows 39,000 replacement for front and 41,000 for rear. I'm expecting to go far beyond that based on experience with my last 5.

Front 7000
Rear 12000

These numbers never decrease since last service.

I have the same issue.
Front are due like 18000km
REAR already like 9000km

total wear for rear would be than cca 20000km which is sooooo bad.
It is usually the front brake pads that are gone way before the rear ones.

anyone?

I'm 9,000 miles on odo. Brakes service keeps getting better and better by service indicator. Started at 30,000F & 32,000R and has increased incrementally to 36,000F & 39,000R at last check. I agree, brake dust indicates BMW front brake bias and my numbers back that up.

I do let the engine/tranny (step) do a lot of braking for me.

Wow the pads last quite badly!
I wonder why is that? Maybe the pads are more performance oriented.
hmmm!??!

Yes, the front pads do most of the job.

If the DSC has to do a lot of breaking do to hard driving the rear pads can take their share of it, but in normal driving more than 70% of the job is done with the front breaks.

Just had both front and back replaced at 18,000 miles. The reason the back might not last as long as the front is the pads are not the same size for front and back. The backs are much smaller.

I recently had the same problem (Fronts pads showed 12,000 rears 6,000), queried it with the dealer and they said a 1 had dropped off the OBC rather that 6000 it should have been 16,000. They said the pads have graded wear indicators and sometimes it gets a bit confused :blink: , but when it hits the next indicator it will right itself.

True to form it has since then gone up (to 9,000) and down in a fairly random pattern :blink: . On a recent tyre change I looked at the pads there is at least another 5,000 left on them but the OBC says 2,300 :wacko: . Take the readings with a pinch of salt and wait until the dashwarning light comes on! :D