This is our first BMW. A 325 wagon with the sport package(2004). My wife drives 100(hwy) miles a day for work. The dealer has been doing scheduled maint. as that came with the car. At 43,000 miles the check brake indicator came on. Again, the car has all highway miles so I was suprised to have to do pads as it is probably the equivilant of about 10,000 miles of normal driving.When the dealer looked at the car they said it also needed rotors! Even though everything was covered I was shocked that a car that is very well taken care of would need rotors at that mileage. My question is, do these cars need rotors that often, or did the dealer make more work for themselves becouse they get paid for all the warrenty work they do? Thanks for any info, Rich

 

On my older 7 series, when I needed new pads, I was told that the rotors are designed to wear at an equal rate, and when the pads get replaced, so do the rotors and crush sensors. I was disgusted with that realization, as it wasn't part of the conversation when I bought the car, and it ended up being a $1000+ brake job. Along with all the other issues I had with that car, I swore off of BMWs.

 

On my E39 528 i changed rotors at 50K+ with second set of brake pads,
on E39 540 i had to change rotors at 40K+ again with second set of brake pads. I drive really hard and i don't think your wife does anything similar during her daily commute, so IMO it's such a BS to change rotors at 43,000 miles, especially if she drives mostly on highway.

Regarding a brake job, BMW charded me ~$900 for front rotors and brake pads on 528 while it was "only" ~$500 for my AMG at the Mercedes dealership.