My 2004 G-35 eats brakes. My warranty timed out 12/2008. Manufacturer replaced front rotors (& resurfaced rears) at 18,013, replaced fronts again at 31,803. I replaced fronts again, my money, last month at 39,038, when I should have been resurfacing with pads for the FIRST time. Online info that this is a 2003-2004 problem includes a news article about a class action, but I can find nothing after the article. I assume the calipers are dragging, but no one has suggested a fix. Ideas? News of the suit or a recall?
While the answer given is often a very subjective one, what are your driving habits and conditions like?
If you do a lot of city driving with hard braking then it’s quite possible to blow through brakes very quickly and this could be considered normal.
As to your thinking that your car should have needed brakes at 39k miles for the first time; that could be debateable. It all depends.
Thanks for the reply. Yes, city driving & spirited driving with hard braking, BUT I have been driving for more than 40 years with first disc brakes on a 66 Ford LTD, later T-Birds, Lincoln Mark, Cadillac deVille & Seville STSs, Lexus SC 400, all with similar driving - 40k has been a consistent rule of thumb, even with the heavy iron.
Here’s a discussion about G35 brakes: http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/WebX?14@@.f0fa59c/0
Sounds like they were somewhat under-designed, either in diameter or in pad material. There have been two recent Nissan/Infiniti reviews in Car and Driver where the cars (370ZX and FX50) were found to have brakes that didn’t perform as well as other cars under hard useage. But your 40k is not a rule, cars do vary. I doubt you’ll get much more out of Infiniti, if it is a real bother trade for a different car/brand.
As for brake jobs, do not use the dealer, they will be very expensive. Find a good independent mechanic, brake jobs are about the simplest thing out there. You should be able to find rotors for $50-$60 each, pads for $20-$30 an axle.
I’m afraid I have no answer for the problem you have based on what you stated. Sometimes it boils down to brake design. That does not necessarily mean that’s it’s bad or unsafe; just the luck of the draw and the fact there has never been a car manufactured that does not have design flaws.
Other car makers over the years have suffered premature brake wear problems so Infiniti would not be the only one on the list.
At one time SAAB had some very premature brake wear problems and a few years later Subaru had a spell with premature brake problems.
In both cases it appeared to boil down to caliper and/or caliper yoke design; or rather a redesign with the new and improved versions being problematic.
If the calipers themselves are dragging, or the brakes are dragging due to the yokes, then it would seem to me that it should be fairly simple to determine this by rotating the wheels by hand.
This is probably not much help to you and I’m not familiar with any lawsuit about this problem although odds are that one exists. Some lawsuits are deserved but the majority are not. There’s simply not enough info known about the technical details behind any problem that could lead me to speak with authority on the subject.
Thanks. The reasons I believe this to be a significant design defect are: these “wear items” were quietly warranty-replaced for 60 months without regard for mileage (other than total warranty mileage limits); and, the GOOGLE postings/links say/imply this was an 03-04 problem not present in essentially-identical 05-06 and later G’s. It seems to me that Infiniti could have corrected the problem for less money than several sets of rotors, pads, labor, etc. (The need for service was not “squeekers” but was a grinding noise/feeling in city driving.)