[Gus Berges]

The lifetime of PCCBs has an infinite amount of answers.... Some people claim that in a few track days they are toast, others claim hundreds of thousands of miles and no wear, others claim "should last the lifetime of the vehicle under normal use", and the truth lays somewhere all over that spectrum.

I've heard of owners of 958 Cayennes that have over 150K miles (±240K kms) on their trucks with these brakes and say "I have a lot of life left in them, and that is with the occasional cross country towing" and I've also heard of others saying that at 60K miles (±100K kms) the brakes needed replacement. Some say that PCCBs should last at least three to four times as long as regular steel rotors, but there are not as many posts about this type of guesstimation on how long they last versus mileage. If one were trying to be numerical about it, you'd think that overall long term running costs of PCCBs should be somewhat similar to the cost of iron based discs (I can see how PCCBs should be "slightly" more as they offer overall higher performance), but apparently the running costs are nearly 15 times as much (1,400% more is not a "slight" amount, especially when the base number is ±$1,200).

The truck in consideration just has more wear on its brake system than originally thought and is on the spectrum of the "not too long of a lifetime". Guess the previous owners enjoyed it at its full potential, thus the quasi-premature wear. And to think that this information came about from a "simple PPI request" that I almost did not have done as the truck had recently (couple of weeks) come out of the dealership from a complete maintenance schedule and extended warranty renewal.

The silver lining to all of this is that I avoided purchasing a vehicle that would have turned out to be a financial disaster. To all: never doubt the value of a PPI (assuming done at a proper place) and always learn as much as you can so you can gauge a situation by yourself instead of blindly trusting others. Caveat emptor has never been more applicable than in this situation....