Hi,

My 1995 Z28 (pretty much stock) is at 65k and I have had to replace the rear brakes four times now...the front pads are still like new!

I don't drive the car that hard...

Any possible explanations?

Note: no drums on this car

 

Sticking caliper/parking brake mechanism.

 

Does the parking brake on early 4th gens use the regular pads?

 

Bad engineering on the LT1 rear disk brakes.
This is one of the reasons they went disk/drum rears in 1998.

 

I wore out a set of rears way earlier than fronts before, but that was before I had a line-lock installed, and I did the occasional "break-torque" (although honestly, I only did maybe ~a half dozen, mostly at the track ) ... but the rear pads wore paper thin, while the fronts were still ~50% or slightly better.

However, since getting into some track days, I've gone through a couple sets of fronts, and no rear pads yet!

 

You're saying Z28's had drum rears in 1998??? I believe you have that backwards. AFAIK, GM dropped the drum rear brakes on the regular V6 models for 1998. All models had disc brakes 1998-03 and AFAIK, all 4th gen Zs had 4 wheel discs.

 

Allow me to clarify:
Primary braking used the rotor disk.
Parking brake used an intergrated drum.

All this normally referred to as LS1 rear brakes, I put them on my 1995. I should have been more specific.

 

What he said

 

That funky parking brake mechanism is the problem with these calipers, they are tricky to set correctly.

 

Anything to do with the proportioning valve as to why they possibly wear sooner in the rear?

 

I've experienced replacing the rears twice for each front change on my 1995. I believe the brake bias is setup to minimize nose dive and therefore works the rears harder than "traditional" car setups. If your going through them at a 4X rate, something is wrong (i.e. pads dragging).