OK thank you for your opinion.

Assuming I went ahead and paid for a report, and it found what I suspect in that there is an underlying fault...

Would it be normal for the dealer / Mazda to reimburse the cost of the inspection?

Or...would I have to submit a claim through the small claims court / go to the motor ombudsman?

A few thoughts off the top of me head.

1. No offence here but are you too heavy on the brakes, plus if driven hard some cars demolish discs, my Rover 827 which had been a police training school car must have had half a dozen sets of discs in their 100k miles and that consumption continued in my use.

we'll assume you are driving normally, the above was just a suggestion, but might be worth looking on Mazda forums to see if this is common.

2. Too little effort on the back brakes, how are they wearing, i would expect similar wear of the pads and discs to the rear if indeed the rears are discs.

3. Are the calipers sliders and pistons properly lubricated, all round not just the fronts. Many garages do not service brakes adequately IMHO, a quick peer and a blast with some brake cleaner is about it at many places, some makers do not have a full brake strip clean lube regime as part of regular servicing, some reputable makes too which has surprised a few of us here, with the wise heads paying a good indy to take on the work every other year.

If caliper pistons and sliders are not properly lubed then by years 3/4 things start to seize up, i'm guessing that the calipers are single piston type both ends with sliding pins to enable the equal distribution of pressure so the disc is 'clamped' centrally as it were, what happens when a pin sticks in place is the pad being pushed by the piston itself does inreasingly more of the braking with the disc being forced over time after time, plus that sticking pin is reluctant to extract following braking, leading to binding.

A similar thing can happen with twin piston calipers or even 4 piston calipers where the pistons are opposed, the caliper in this design is solid on its carrier and the pistons alone do the work, obviously they need to retract freely or you get overheating and odd wear.

If one or more pistons start to seize you can end up again with one pad receiving more brake pressure and again the disc is forced over.

If the rears are not fully free you can end up with the fronts doing more work than they should leading to overheated front brakes, indeed even changing the make of brake pad at one end can cause a slight imbalance of effort front/rear as different materials have different behaviours.

Before ABS you'd have an inkling something wasn't right because you would get premature lock up at one end (usually the front) on slippery surfaces, but with ABS you don't get that feel in quite the same way.

Sorry its been a lot of waffle to read, i'd be more inlinded to let a competent indy have a good look at the brakes, i suspect lack of full servicing in the brakes is at the root of this.

Oh and i too would be running Brembo discs and pads.

Edited by gordonbennet on 16/11/2017 at 16:43