Could anyone advise me on this. My daughter took her three year old Fabia in for service (main dealer) last week. Yesterday she took it in for its MOT and it failed with “severely pitted brake discs”. This seems a bit odd to me in that the car has only done 22.000 miles and when it was serviced the week before , there was no mention of a problem with the discs.

In my 30 odd years experience with various vehicles I have only once had to replace discs through wear and tear and that was around the 80/90,000 mile mark.

Before I start making a fuss with either the main dealer or the test centre is this a common problem with Skodas.

Edited 19 July, 200817 yr by fragsdad
Wrong Car

Is she the owner from new, or 2nd? Could be debris between the pad and disk, harsh breaking, binding brakes etc etc.

What type of service was done, and by whom? Some garages inspect 100%, some try on faults, others DONT service cars properly.

Could be the garage simply did an oil change and general inspection but didnt remove the wheels to fully inspect the brakes. I'd get onto the main dealer personally.

Got any pics?

If ther car has only done 22,000 miles, the dealer may well not have bothered to take the wheels off to inspect things that closely.

Low mileage cars will often deteriorate faster than ones that are used more. Unless there has been an issue with the brakes (as we had on a Vauxhall Corsa), I wouldn't expect to replace disks until 80,000+ miles. Some modern asbestos free pads do wear out the discs quicker than the old sort, but 22,000 miles sounds a bit low to me.

If it's a MK I fabia (@3 years old i'm guesing it is) then I'm guessing the pitted brakes are the rear discs. I'd take a rear wheel off one at a time and clean them up with a wire brush then take the car out for a drive with a few emergency stops to make the rear brakes do some work. Maybe leave the handbrake very marginally on on a quiet road and drive slowly just to strip off any surface rust.

The rears do hardly any work so they do rust up even at low mileages.

If they are genuinely on the way out go to a copany called GSF :

GSF Car Parts - 55 Branches Nationwide

They will sell you some OEM equivalent discs and pads for about 1/3rd of what most main dealers want for them. You can then go and get them fitted by a local VAT registered garage for about 1 hours labour.

Total cost should be about £120 for discs (£50ish), pads (£20ish) and labour (£50ish).

Edited 21 July, 200817 yr by cheezemonkhai

What others have said:

Low mileage means the car may have sat for long periods of time without being driven - the rust has a chance to develop, then, which regular driving prevents.

The pitting is often worse on the disc inner surfaces than the outside, so not obvious unless you inspect properly, as the MOT man did.

If they're classed as severely pitted, it's unlikely that wire brushing or leaving the brakes on will clear it up. If there is plenty of meat left on the pads, you can reuse them, providing a period of gentle braking to bed them in again is observed. The pads are the cheap part though, so hardly worth skimping there.