Ceramic brakes lifespan
 

I am curious what is a life span of those brakes in our D3-s. As the cars are obviously not track driven, when are rotors being at the end of their life?
The car that I am looking is a 2009 with 270.000km on the clock, and the rotors look like new, but this does not mean anything. Anyone with any experience?

As you rightly point out you can't judge the condition of the discs visually alone. They need to be removed and weighed to assess their life remaining. They will also be junk if they have too many visible flaws in terms of cracks or chunks missing. They're more likely to be trashed due to careless wheel removal than anything else (drop a wheel on a disc and there's a high probability of damage).

Mileage is largely irrelevant if the owner didn't brake much, but I've known D3 owners take their cars round the 'ring, so don't rule out track/heavy use!

The technical dump includes info on the inspection process for the discs - if you're looking at a used car to buy, ask to see the last brake report where that process has been followed. I'll bet they've not been checked, however.....at the very least the last time the pads were changed may indicate how long it's been since the discs were assessed.

I am in the middle of retrofitting some of these to my D3. The answer is that there is a minimum thickness (marked on each disc) and a weight (marked on each disc) as well as wear markers impregnated into each disc (little round points about the size of a penny near the edge of the disc) - you’re looking to test those three metrics to decide.

If they are worn out I have been communicating with ReDisc in Poland who will refurbish the four discs for about £6k, so it’s not too bad if you consider you got almost 300,000km of outstanding performance. Obviously if you start down the rabbit hole of comparing the market value of the car to a high ticket fix like this it sounds a bit disappointing but then I’d argue that the D3 is a car worth keeping in good shape regardless of cost. I certainly treat mine that way.

Redisc is Slovenian company, by the way...
And yes, they do refurbish them.