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Everyone’s trying to make a dollar go a little farther these days. At Van’s Tires & Service in Akron, OH, we’d like to give you a few pointers on how to make your brakes last a bit longer:

• Coast whenever possible. For instance, if you’re coming off an interstate onto an exit ramp, just let off the gas or the cruise control as you leave the highway and let the car coast up to the stoplight for your turnoff, rather than waiting until the last couple of hundred yards to apply the brakes. When you see a stoplight ahead that’s just changed to red, anticipate how long it will be until it changes to green again and coast until it changes and you can roll right through the green without ever having to stop. This will save you gas as well by not having to get the car moving from a dead stop again.
• Anticipate what other drivers are going to do and keep a good distance from them. As a driver ahead of you passes an object like a mailbox or telephone pole, remember that for every ten mph you should allow one second to pass the mailbox yourself. This is safe driving as well as conserving your brakes.
• Keep your speed down. Stopping from high speeds is tough on your brakes, and the braking effort required starts to increase exponentially at higher speeds. The weight of a fully-loaded vehicle means there’s a great deal of inertia that has to be arrested and brought to a stop from highway speeds.
• Try to ditch any excess weight in your vehicle.
• In hilly country, it’s easy for brakes to overheat and begin to fade on downhill grades. Use your vehicle’s transmission braking ability on downhills and shift into a lower gear; on automatic transmissions, turning off Overdrive is advisable. This will save you from having to ride the brake pedal to keep your speed down.
• If you’re on a familiar stretch of city street and you know roughly what speed the stoplights are synchronized for, try to match that speed so that you can roll through a series of green lights.
• When it comes time to replace your brakes, don’t skimp. Modern brake pads are extremely complex, with as many as a dozen different ceramic, metallic and semimetallic components bonded together. There’s a big difference between OEM-quality brake pads and aftermarket knockoffs, in terms of performance and service life. Brake pads are a “you get what you pay for” proposition, and you’re likely to not see the same performance from the cheaper pads!

All these ideas for conserving your brake pads are really just a part of sensible driving and can easily become a habit once you get used to them. What kind of shape are your brakes in? Are you noticing longer stopping distances, strange noises or excessive brake pedal travel? Make an appointment with Van’s Tires & Service in Akron, OH and let our technicians have a look!