I drove my last F150 for ten years, over 250K miles and had to get one brake job. Current one is at 122K and the brakes are still fine so far. 8500 miles I'm pretty sure I could get using shoe leather for brakes. I really can't imagine that just a habit of driving fast between lights can possibly cause this kind of difference in brake life. I want to hear her on Stump the Chumps!

Growing up in Montour Falls I was amazed that this could happen until I rembered they tore down the only bowling lane in town years ago. Now the natives have nothing else to do but bowl for foreign cars. OMCS-76

I have "burning feedback" (pun intentional) for you about this episode; that's probably why you didn't answer the phone this morning. I am of course talking about Kat, the San Diego mom going through brake pads faster than toilet tissue. If she truly needs new pads twice a year, drives 17,000 miles a year, then she's grinding pads down to the metal within 8500 miles. That's roughly the rate at which most weekend race car drivers do. She must be doing some incredible braking on those California roads! Here's what we need to tell her, and ASAP: get some advanced driver training. She believes she's a "good" driver but she needs to become a "better" driver. Her problems are over if she can learn to “snub and release" her brakes to set the speed where she needs it, instead of (I suspect) riding the brakes. She may also be “last minute" braking and holding the brakes at each stop, where “chauffeur braking" (smooth, even pressure to bring the car to a halt, with a slight release of pressure at the final stop) will get better performance and endurance from her brakes. Why the urgency? She's almost certainly overheating her brakes with her Dukes of Hazzard driving style. Even with new pads and (I hope) new brake fluid in her car, she's probably experiencing brake fade during her so-called normal driving, and she will have less than effective stopping power when she needs it most, in an accident! She's most certainly overheating her rotors and boiling her brake fluid. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she's already experiencing brake fade after dropping the kids off at school, takes it to her mechanic saying, “brakes need service again," and her mechanic thinks, “Woohoo, this month's boat payment is in the bag!" Her husband should buy her stainless steel brake cables and a dash-mounted velocity meter instead of jewelry, she'll get much better use out of them than earrings. Thanks for the great shows, guys, keep on truckin'.