Thread: D3 pad sensor replacement with LR tank & Cooper tyres.

Hi fellow forumites,
Some advice rather than a problem, recently during a trip to Alice Springs via Uluru on the Great Central Road. The D3 performed faultlessly in the fact that it did 9500 klms successfully never missed a beat. 13L /100klm at an average speed of 81.6 klm/hr I think for the entire trip.
I had two issues on the trip one was Cooper Tyres which I will never purchase again. I did two of them in the latter part of the trip, only done 1500 klms prior to leaving. Lower the pressure you say, I did, when I did that the tyre temp started to rise quite sharply, I had to keep the pressures up so I could do more than 50 klm/hr. Both rear tyres which sends a mesage in itself. Having the dual wheel carrier, the long range tank, the fridge (full) and a CT trailer (TVan) on is too much for these tyres. They are the HT plus range which I was told would be OK on gravel, well they're not! The front tyres were fine, brilliant.
Second issue was the rear brake pad sensor, at some point it got broken, not completely just a bit. This could have happened by some gravel getting into the rim or I broke it when I was changing a wheel, not sure. Anyway the sensor had intermittent contact which drove me nuts for about two days, I was ready to rip the alarm speaker out of the dash at the end of day two........ An intermitant binging / bonging noise, never realised how annoying this is. When I got to the in-laws in Melbourne I cut the sensor bit off with some pliers, the light stayed on but the alarm stopped.
Anyway I replaced the sensor yesterday, with the long range tank getting your hand up where the connector is on the inside of the chassis rail is very tight, you need the arms of a six year old to get into the space. I managed to get the clip out eventually, should have been a five minute job, I was nearly ready to remove the tank, only joking the job could never be that bad!
For $30 and the annoyance of the alarm carrying a spare sensor is a good idea and something I'll be doing in future. The sensor are wired in series so intially you don't know which one is the bad one.

In future, if the brake pad sensor wire plays up like that just cut it off. Pull the wire off the brake pad and throw it away, then join the wires together for the bit that's still connected to the car and it'll remake the circuit. Yes, you'll have no low brake pad warning so you'll need to keep an eye on them but at least it'll not keep bonging at you.

My RRS has this on both wires, I got fed up of snatching the wires when the wheels were full of mud at work.