Premature brake pad or rotor wear on the 2002 Honda Accord
Only 2 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When premature brake pad or rotor wear gets reported
There are 2 reports of premature brake pad or rotor wear on the 2002 Honda Accord, 2 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 45,000 miles. It is the 49th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 126,897 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Putting it right typically runs $300–$1,400 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 17 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2006, at a median of 500 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 100,000 miles.
By volume the 2008 carries the most reports, with 100; the 2002 has 0. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
I recently had new tires put on my honda accord, along with a lower control arm replacement and caliper/rotor repair/replace. Upon picking up my car the technician asked me to come out to the garage - my car was on a lift - he showed me something alarming....the sub frame is rusting out - toward the passenger side of the car. There is about a 2" x 3.5" hole in the frame. When I got home I googled this issue and found quite a few comments/complaints on various boards about the same issue on similar year vehicles. Most of the comments also said the complainant found out that in the model years 1998-2002 the design allows the AC condenser outlet drip water on the sub frame at this exact point. This sounds like something honda needs to ante up to repair. I had planned to keep my honda until at least 200,000 or more miles, now not so sure that is a wise idea. *tr
During a regular oil change at a firestone auto care store on 9/12/2009, the store insisted that I needed to have my car brake pads replaced. Then, on my way home from the firestone store after the oil-change and brake services, my new brakes started having problems. Firestone did not tell me what happened to my new brakes when I returned to the store next day. I later on learned that 1) firestone had installed incorrect brake pads on my car on 9/12/2009 and 2) their mechanics had kept the incorrect brake pads on my car during my return visit on 9/13/2009. Then, in may of 2012, I started hearing noises from the brakes again. Firestone inspected my brakes and insisted that they did nothing wrong during my september of 2009 visits and that I needed to have 1) my brake caliper system replaced, 2) the rotors replaced, 3) the 2009 firestone-installed incorrect brake pads replaced with the same incorrect but new brake pads. I took my car to the honda dealer and learned that there was nothing wrong with the brake caliper system and that the incorrect brake pads had caused damage to the rotor. I reported these issues to firestone's…
Also reported on the 2002 Honda Accord
Other powertrain problem
Complete transmission failure
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
Seat belt or retractor failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 2 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 2 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does premature brake pad or rotor wear happen on the 2002 Honda Accord?
Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 125,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is premature brake pad or rotor wear on the 2002 Honda Accord?
2 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed