Absolutely!

IMO, driving habits have a HUGE impact on brake wear (and gas mileage).

FWIW, I've driven 70+K in my old Accord since buying it 5 years ago, and I have yet to change the pads. Judging by the wear rate they've got at least another 40K to go! I've never been terribly aggressive behind the wheel and over the last ~2 years have made even more of an effort to anticipate traffic and stop lights. I guess I'm a 'hypermiler,' although I'm hesitant to use the term since I don't share their obsessive-compulsive dedication. (You won't see me pushing the dumb car across a parking lot!)

At the other extreme, I've seen new pads and rotors destroyed in 10K or less. Having carpooled with a girl with this 'talent,' I'm not surprised her poor car is in distress. Her driving 'style' was essentially binary - stomp the gas until it's time to stomp the brake. Ouch! Needless to say, her mileage was atrocious.

IMO, it seems likely that there's an critical temperature at which the materials weaken and begin to wear at an elevated rate. If you need to shed a lot of speed, it's best to do so as slowly as possible. This give the system time to dissipate heat.

Up until a few years ago, I assumed rotors were a lifetime component. Doh!

+1

My wifes Explorer just passed 93,000 miles with original pads and rotors. The pads have about 25% material left. Rotors look new.

My Mazda has 72,000 miles. Also original pads and rotors. Pads are less than 50% worn. Rotors look new.

Not sure what the big secret to long lasting brakes is. We've never lived in a big city, maybe thats it?

I live in a big city with bad traffic. You have to do a lot of stop and go driving here. Also, my truck tows, gets mud on the brakes, and it has me behind the wheel. I consider pads and rotors a regular replacement thing, and am just fine changing them every 80K.

Rear brakes are another matter. I haven't touched the drums on my truck. They are all original and in good shape.

At 80k miles,I'd probably clean and re-adjust the rear drum bakes.

They are self adjusting.

Try cleaning them up with emery cloth and brake cleaner. If the front ones are ventilated and the webs in the center are not too corroded kepp them. But do mic them to be sure you are in the safe range.

I'm still using my original 16 yr old rotors (Maxima). 320,000+ KM city driving. While doing my repairs for the last 4 months they sat outside and got rusty as [censored] so I just hit them with a wire brush on the die grinder and cleaned them up nice.

Nearly all cars built after the 1970s have self adjusting drums, but I have always found that the factory adjusters don't take up all the slack that they should.

I think many people don't know that even though modern drum brakes do "self adjust" they do need occasional resets from you, the driver, to have the self adjuster work properly occasionally you should put the car in reverse and roll back a bit followed by a firm application of the brakes a couple of times.

Not long on GM vehicles.

I've got 50k on the OEMs in my Balt....

Drum brakes when serviced properly self adjust to the extents for the life of the brakes. If they need a reset then they weren't done properly in the first place. I know because I did mediocre drum brake work for years so the adjusters were hit and miss. I knew the car company could assemble brakes that self adjusted most of the time so I learned myself to do them properly. Now I get tall brakes that don't degrade as the shoes wear.

It is unlikely that any driver could avoid reverse so completely that the rear brakes would go out of adjustment.

Funny none of the 5 things I have bought new came from the factory with self adjusters properly installed to work. Includes one japanese import.

If you replace the pads before the rivets chew into the rotor so that all you have to do to the rotor is break the glaze with a scotch-brite pad, the rotors can last a very long time. This is especially true with softer brake pad materials. One of the 2 rotors on my 438,000 mile Satellite is original to the car, and still in spec because it only had to be turned once or twice at a minimum cut over all those years. But the trend these days is to harder pad materials, like ceramic, that will wear the rotor far faster than old non-metallic or even semi-metallic pads so the rotors will have a significant lip that and require turning probably within every 100k miles at the MOST, maybe more often. Modern rotors are also typically thinner to start with than in bygone years, so there's less meat to start with. And some high-performance types aren't meant to be turned at all.

That's not a "reset," its that drum brake self-adjusters ONLY ratchet to take up slack when the brakes are applied in reverse. If you never applied the brakes in reverse, the self-adjusters would never do ANYTHING at all. If you're in the habit of rarely applying the brakes firmly while backing (say you always back uphill out of your garage, like me, and barely have to touch the brakes before shifting into drive) then you might have to consciously apply the brakes firmly while backing from time to time to get the adjusters to work.