Worn out brake pads

[Mblaster]

My front brake pads are nearing neading replacement and the garage i get it serviced at recommended the disks be replaced along with the pads once they are worn out. The question i have is, when the pads wear out fully is it going to cause any damage to my brakes (i know it'll damage the disks but they are going anyway so doesn't matter)? and is there a simple way of checking the wear so i don't end up miles from home with no brake pads left?

[Jasp]

Once you have worn the friction material away you are going to have metal directly contacting the disc, now if at this point the car will stop or not is another question and best left to god to answer, since you will more then likely be seeing him soon, unless of course by your careless disregard for safety you end up killing someone else as well, then you might be going the other way.

You know they need doing get them replaced or don't drive the car.

*edit* Sorry if this sounds a little harsh but i trained to be a mechanic for two years and the fact you are even asking the questions means you are at least thinking about doing it, to answer your question though yes, once the friction material has worn away you have the metal backing on the pad, once thats gone you caliper is going to be stopping the car, meaning these will need replacing also.

[GoNz0]

the minimum brake pad thickness is long before they go metal on metal, after this point they will be at the stage where they overheat faster than they should, so lets say your going down the motorway and after 20 miles you find you have to do an emergency stop when the car infront spins out then you will be taking the car infront and yourself to see god when they overheat and stop working halfway through the stop.

get them done, if anything should happen and you do live you will be infront of the judge for driving a car that shouldn't be on the road.

you may not need new discs jsut yet but you may as well pay one fitting charge and get them done.

if you think its expensive see if any of your mates are handy with brakes as i change them on all the familys cars, its really easy

[pipTheGeek]

added to what jasp said, the friction material on a brake bad is designed to slip when in contact with the disc. Metal on Metal wont which could lead to wheels locking un-expectedly.
You might also like to consider that a car doing 70MPH contains enough energy to heat a kilo of steel up by nearly 2000C. Assume that your back brakes do very little normally, that is 1000C of heat for each front disc to deal with which is enough to cause the metal to metal contact to sieze.

It is easy to check the thickness of the brake pads, just whip the wheel off and take a look. The hard part is getting a feel for how quickly they wear down.