They are not difficult to check. Just need a T-30 torx fitting and a jack. I am surprised you have not adjusted yet. I would suggest adjusting and at that point you can see how good they are.The rear drum brake can't the inspect easily,
I have near 50k on mine and have no issues.The rear drum brake can't the inspect easily, Normally how many miles it can last? say 50K miles or 100K miles? I have one 2012 Cruze LT. 1.4 L turbo engine.
At least it was easy!... I was bored or wanted to do maintenance on my car which at the time was a 1979 AMC Concord.
I ended up having to replace the rotors due to excessive pulsation at just under 50k miles. It was getting bad and is a huge peeve of mine. Out went the pads at the same time.I had my rear drums adjusted during the first month of ownership back in January/February 2012. At 94K miles (my last oil change) the front and rear brakes still had over half their pads left. At this rate I probably will never change the brake pads in my Cruze.
A lot of cars bias light braking towards the rear these days (prevents nose dive). The Cruze should do this, but often the drums are misadjusted. We've changed the rear brakes 2 or 3x on my mothers 2007 Accord with 80k. More than the fronts - very weird. No caliper or rust issues; apparently quite normal for those cars.I usually keep our cars for at least 150,000 miles and I never had to replace rear brakes yet drums or disks. When we got rid of our 1996 honda civic ex it had 135,000 - 150,000 (don't remember getting old an feeble) miles and we bought it brand new. We traded it in our our cruze and it still had the original factory rear drum brakes. I think we changed the front discs three times. We have a 2007 mazda 3s with rear discs and it has 107,000 miles and it still has the original factory brakes and have never been changed (we bought the car new). We have changed the fronts discs once so far on our Mazda 3s.
Drums and rear brakes in general should last a long time. You should get easily 100,000 to 150,000 miles out of the factory rear drums.
With that said if you go to the track obviously you won't get that kind of mileage out of them.
I have to say I am impressed with the front disc pad life in our cruze.