Help with brakes. Pads not making proper contact with rotors.

I have something odd going on with my brakes. I just hit 1,000 miles. I've never tracked the car. Please see the attached picture. You can see the rust on the rotors which never goes away. It seems to me the pads are not making full contact with the rotors and it has been like this since day 1. I figured the pads would break in after while but they have not. Any ideas? Both front rotors are like this while the rear rotors look normal. This is not just rust from a wash. This never goes away. My pads only contact the center of the rotor and it appears only 65% of the rotor is actually used.

That might be normal for those pads area of contact with the rotors .

Brian V said:

That might be normal for those pads area of contact with the rotors .

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NOPE! not normal!!! Probably need new shoes and depending on how long its bee doing it a new rotor. Remove all applicable components and inspect or take it to the dealer. If its under warranty I would just take it to the dealer. Unless you do not want the dealers messing with your car, do it yourself.

My car got good and rained on yesterday, so I'm sure the rotors are rusted to hell right now.

I'll take it out after work and scrub the rotors to see if mine look like yours or like Zitros

Try some hard braking and see if that does anything. Then take it to the dealer.

Get your phone tucked in there and get a photo of the pads and how they contact the rotor.

Do some brake burnishing runs to get some pressure on there and to get things nicely heated.

With only 1000 miles and no hard braking it wouldn't surprise me if the pads just haven't been worn in.

If the corrosion goes deeper than the surface, and is still present after some hard burnishing runs, then it might make sense to get new rotors.

-T

We've had a lot of rain, heat and wet conditions lately, and my rotors look just like Zitrosounds'. I have 25,000 miles on my car and a few track outings, though.

It's very odd that you say both sides are this way. It seems unlikely that there's a defective part on both wheel sides. I agree with Trackaholic that you should try some hard braking and see if that cleans it up.

Zitrosounds said:

NOPE! not normal!!! Probably need new shoes and depending on how long its bee doing it a new rotor. Remove all applicable components and inspect or take it to the dealer. If its under warranty I would just take it to the dealer. Unless you do not want the dealers messing with your car, do it yourself.

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I see you have had the small rock/whatever between the caliper and barrel issue.

Look around this site. All sorts of good info:
http://www.brembo.com/en

Tflong24 said:

I see you have had the small rock/whatever between the caliper and barrel issue.

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Who that has tracked and R hasn't? I also had it on my TP.

Mine seems to make full contact

Just bed it in a couple of times.
A lot of new pads are not perfectly flat and might take a couple thousands of miles of gentle driving to bed in properly.

I had the same issue with my rear rotors. Tried many things and nothing worked. Got new rotors/pads and when i removed my brake pads they had a good chunk of pad missing.

Zitrosounds said:

Who that has tracked and R hasn't? I also had it on my TP.

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Havent tracked mine, but was getting tons of little rocks stuck in between.

Use the brakes.