.......looking around the car today I noticed that the brake discs aren't very shinny. I assume the car had been stood for a while before I bought it but I've done about 500 miles since I got her. Should the discs be nice and shinny.

The car is a year old and only covered 9K miles. Can the pads go hard or do the brakes need looking at

Octavia FL VRs Tsi ( 11 Plate )

Just to add, the brakes are really good.

no they should come back, just do some accelerate and medium braking until they scub up, allow them to cool if they get too hot

Its an annoying vicious cycle.

1.) Wash the car

2.) discs get rusty and look dirty.

3.) Drive the car to clean the brake pads

4.) Rust cleaned off gets deposited on the wheels.

5.) Wheels get wet and collect brown pools.

6.) You look at the car and you realise it needs washing again

7.) Go to step 1.)

on the motorway get up to 70+ brake hard and progressive to 50mph then get back up to 70 for about 10 mins then do it again clears the brakes AP reccomend it when fitting new pads and discs to bed them in.

Replace them with new discs which are treated against rusting. Brake depot Apparantley sell such a thing. Carbon steel will always corrode no matter how hard we try to clean them up. The bit the bugs then hell out of me is where the wheel jgets bolted the hub part gets a right mess

Even after a run of say an hour the Discs are still rusty looking. It's as though the pad on the wheel side isn't touching the disc very much.

Maybe the are seized a little or the pad is not correctly fitted into the calliper so it not make full contact with the disc. Not sure I'd same on skoda but my Honda had small locating lumps on the pad and a hole in the calliper mine failed the mot because the disc was corroded on the back side because the pad was not sitting correctly in the locating hole because of some dirt. Worth maybe just having them stripped and cleaned or if you can do it yourself pretty straight foward job. Worth also trying to check the rear side on the disc see if it's the same.

Replace them with new discs which are treated against rusting. Brake depot Apparantley sell such a thing. Carbon steel will always corrode no matter how hard we try to clean them up. The bit the bugs then hell out of me is where the wheel jgets bolted the hub part gets a right mess

Then run the pads over the brakes, strip off the coating in the braking area and have the same.

Pretty much all the genuine disks have a coating on them, but they're still going to rust eventually.

Even after a run of say an hour the Discs are still rusty looking. It's as though the pad on the wheel side isn't touching the disc very much.

Any pics?

That doesn't sound right - the braking surface should be nice and shiny, the edges will be showing a light corrosion by now but that's notmal.

If your outside pad isn't making clean square contact with the disc I'd say you haven't got full braking ability (possibly dangerous) and will have uneven pad/disc wear.

Get your dealer to look at it while it's still under warranty!

Even after a run of say an hour the Discs are still rusty looking. It's as though the pad on the wheel side isn't touching the disc very much.

On my mkI I found that the pad doesn't move evenly on the shims (or whatever they are called) that sit between the pad and the carrier so the pad tends to not push on the outside of the disc. I cleaned the carriers and pads up and it has been better since then.