Do I really need new brakes?

City miles do mean more brake use and pad / rotor wear than highway miles.

However, the only way to be sure is to measure the brake pads and compare
the measurements to the wear limits in the service manual.

 

 OK. Honda recommends it, but my experience

See - this is why I suspect my Honda Dealer is lying to me. As you
say, "90k miles between pad changes"...
This is exactly what my former-mechanic friend said to me, that no way
I should need brakes at 14k miles.

I guess I won't know until I get someone I can trust to open up the
brakes and show them to me.
Yeah, they have to show them at the Dealer but I figure they just keep
an old one with 2mm laying around so they can use that to show me...

 

It's clear from this thread that you do not know much about your vehicle
nor are you mechanically inclined. You also apparently do not trust the
people you have service your car. Unless you find someone you can trust
you are forever screwed.

Get a second opinion at an independent garage. You may also want to get
professional help to overcome your paranoia.

 

I always tell the dealer or other potential miscreant that I want to see
them on the car.

 

Just ask them to show you while they're still on the car. If they have
already shown you a pads off the car, then you know what they look like. On
the car look to see what's between the plate and the rotor (big shiny disk
that gets squeezed by the brake pads). Actually you can easily look at the
outer pad yourself by simply removing the wheel as if changing a flat.

If, as has been discussed, the inner or outer pad is gone and the other one
on the same wheel looks like new, you have a stuck caliper. If that is the
case, repair should be covered under the new car warranty.

 

Okay, I did finally take my car in and have the brakes looked at by an
independent mechanic.

The guy I wanted to take it to who I trusted is no longer in business
so I took it to the guy who took over his business.
He showed me the brakes. I really didn't know exactly what I was
seeing but I could see the pads were down pretty low. He said 3mm so
that's 1mm more than the Dealership said, after having put about 3000
or so more miles on them. However he said the rotors were also shot
and needed to be replaced. Whether they were or not, I don't know but
the guy seemed trustworthy.

He also showed me the tread left on 2 of my tires and said I could get
a bit more out of them but I may as well replace them now. I could see
that he was right on that, so I figured if the tires were shot the
brakes probably were too.

He replaced 2 tires that had worn unevenly and the brakes and rotors,
an air filter, cleaning up the rear brakes and doing some kind of
maintenance on those, and replacing oil all for around $550. I really
don't know if the rotors needed replacement or not but I decided to
trust him because what else am I gonna do? If I take it back to the
dealer and they say it needs new rotors they would charge me almost
double what he was charging me, and even if they were able to
resurface the rotors (which this guy said there was not enough metal
left to do), then they'd charge me about 2/3 of what it cost me to
replace them here, just to resurface them.

So all in all, if the guy does a good job, I guess it is worth it to
get new brakes and tires etc. now instead of waiting til they become
completely useless.

 

tire wear does NOT affect brake wear! or vice versa.

did he do an alignment check? faulty alignment is the only thing that
causes uneven tire wear.

 

or blown struts/shocks.

 

ok. that's typically called "cupping" as opposed to "uneven" though.

 

appologies for being so anal. I latch on to all absolute statements.
I tried really hard to think of other examples. Couldn't.
Well, maybe one.
Defective tires can also cause uneven wear. ;-P