Scored rear discs Superb 3

[philg25]

Just had four new tyres fitted to my 2017 1.6tdi dsg. On collection mechanics told me to keep an eye on my rear pads as they were low and my discs would need changing soon. I thought it was just the usual tactic employed by these garages(Kwik Fit/National etc) to get you just to get them changed there and then but when I got home I had a look. Sure enough both rear discs look excessively scored and will need changed. Is this normal for a 23000 mileage car. I'm assuming the mechanically handbrake doesn't help on these cars but I am not one for using the brakes excessively. Could there be another issue?

[crossmania337]

I had the same issue. Both the pads and the discs were in terrible condition after 10.000 miles! The dealer changed them under warranty and I assumed there was a batch of defective rear discs/pads.

[philg25]

3 hours ago, crossmania337 said:

I had the same issue. Both the pads and the discs were in terrible condition after 10.000 miles! The dealer changed them under warranty and I assumed there was a batch of defective rear discs/pads.

Car going in for service on Monday (Arnold Clarks). Have informed them of the issue and already on the phone the service receptionist has said, 'we wont be replacing them for free' despite them not knowing what the issue is. When I pointed out that I traded my 80,000 mile Vauxhall Astra in for the Superb with the original discs still on less than 6 months ago the phone went silent. I think I'll have to go in all guns blazing on Monday.

[GAG]

I have the same issue of rear brake disc corrosion on a car that has only done 18,000 mls.

 

The service manager at Westend Garage, Stirling stated that it is not a warranty issue because the brakes are only covered under warranty for the first six months. He said it would be classed as fair wear and tear. I pointed out that the pads still have plenty meat on them so how can it be fair wear and tear if they are not worn. He couldn't answer that one! He went on to say that the braking is mainly done by the front brakes so it is to be expected that the rear brakes will show signs of corrosion because the brake pads will not be scraping it off! 

 

A bit of confusion there, one minute it is fair wear and tear and the next the brakes are not being used so would not be rubbing the rust off. If that was the case how can it be fair wear and tear if the brake pads are not getting used.

 

When the car was serviced, the mechanic sent a video showing the rear discs with the corrosion and scores and he stated they don't need replaced and that I should keep an eye on them. I have owned many cars and covered thousands of miles and I have never had to replace the rear pads on any vehicles let alone the discs.

 

I will be contacting Skoda UK about this and see what they have to say about it.

 

 

Edited 5 April, 2019 by GAG

[Groaver]

Just had an oil change yesterday and they reported pitted front and scored rear discs.

13,000 miles on the car on a 67 plate.

 

Anyone recommend good after market pads and discs for the Superb?

[Steviedakota]

1 hour ago, Groaver said:

Just had an oil change yesterday and they reported pitted front and scored rear discs.

13,000 miles on the car on a 67 plate.

 

Anyone recommend good after market pads and discs for the Superb?

I went with Pagid disks and Brembo pads. Glad to be shot of the rubbish OEM discs. Parts were €100 plus fitting.

[Goblin]

I had this with mine. Went in for service at 19k and a year and a half old, and the rear brakes discs were heavily scored and required replacing with pads, to the tune of £350. No ifs, no buts - not a happy customer. They tried doing me for my front brakes too, which were fine. I took it 5 months later down to National Tyres (the red and yellow place) to have my winter tyres put on, and I asked about it. They had a look and said there's easily a few thousand left in them, but the front discs were starting to go as well. They said they can do it with decent brand (Pagid / Brembo) for £250, and they'll do the tyre swap for free. 

[GAG]

Just to update my post. I contacted Skoda UK by email and Stephen, one of their customer reps, contacted me by phone on Wednesday. I explained the problem with rust and pitted rear discs while the pads still have plenty of wear on them. He listened and said that he would get in touch with Westend Garage to find out what they were saying about it and that he would call me back on Friday. Well Friday came and went without any call back, in fact so did another five days so I ended up calling him back this Wednesday. Great service, not.

 

He apologised for not calling me and went on to explain that he had contacted Westend Garage and that they said there was some pitting and scoring but it was not affecting the efficiency of the brakes so there was no problem. In view of that there was nothing Skoda would be doing about it.

 

I pointed out that no other vehicle I have owned had brake discs in that condition after 18,000 miles and was it to be classed as a normal feature of Skodas that the brake disc would corrode and pit in a vehicle less than two years old with 18000 miles on the clock and if so I will make this know to as many people as I possibly can.

 

I couldn't seem to get him to understand that it is what the dealer was saying that I was complaining about and that I would have expected Skoda to inspect the brakes or have some other independent garage/inspector inspect them rather than just pass on what the dealer that is being complained said and accept their answer without question. If I'd  known that was all Skoda were going to do it would appear to be a pointless exercise in making a complaint to them because all he did was tell me what I already knew.

 

The bottom line is that Skoda will accept the dealers say so without question and that the customer is always wrong.

 

The car is a Skoda Lease car and one of the reasons that I lease is to avoid maintenance costs so as it stands I will not be replacing the brake discs/pads unless they get to the stage of metal on metal, which given the amount left on the pads is unlikely before the lease is up and I will have to give it a lot of thought whether or not I would get another Skoda.

Edited 17 April, 2019 by GAG

[310golfr]

does it really matter if the disc are scored ?

if it's not affecting the efficiency of the brakes, then  it's not a problem  

 

[xman]

8 hours ago, 310golfr said:

does it really matter if the disc are scored ?

if it's not affecting the efficiency of the brakes, then  it's not a problem

 

Depends on the level and nature of the scoring. If its light grooving then probably not, but if its deep, uneven then maximum braking effort may be reduced as the pads are not making full orthogonal contact and the brake area for pads (also grooved) that apply full pressure is effectively reduced.

 

Certainly if lots of or signficant pitting and corroded areas are evident, that indicates material flaws in the disks/pads that could be serious.

 

Often the inner non visible side of the disc is far worse than the outer due to floating calipers sticking as well.

 

Partly this is caused/aggravated by the OE pads, these have a high metallic content, maybe not great quality control on the friction material.

 

When I stroll through car parks, I rarely see any disks as bad as on my Skodas. Nice shiny, smooth disks, be it Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Vauxhall, Toyota, Nissan even Audi

 

Don't see why a £30,000 Skoda should be any worse

 

 

[Gizmo]

On 05/04/2019 at 16:48, Groaver said:

Just had an oil change yesterday and they reported pitted front and scored rear discs.

13,000 miles on the car on a 67 plate.

 

Anyone recommend good after market pads and discs for the Superb?

 

I recently changed mine @ 52K miles, they had started to wear unevenly (grooves) from around 2K miles old.

 

I went for Brembo discs and pads as the discs have a UV coating on them to prevent rusting (the silver ‘hub’ part not the pad area)

 

These were the 52K mile old discs I removed  :

 

 

The Brembos 2K miles in:

 

 

I wouldn’t hesitate to use the Brembos again.

[GAG]

Brake disc should not be pitted and scored and it will affect the braking efficiency and more so as time goes on. It is not "fair wear and tear" How can it be when the front brakes look like new and the rear pads have plenty life in them. It is shoddy inferior steel that is the problem. They will require to be changed at some point well before they should. As has been stated none of my other cars had discs in that state over such a relatively short period and mileage.

 

As Skoda are washing their hands of the problem thinking it is normal for a car to have pitted and scored brakes it will be the future owner who is picking up the bill far sooner than they should be. 

[johnny cabbage head]

Had new rear discs and pads fitted to rear of my 26,000 mile superb, and a set of front pads, just before I bought is as a skoda approved used car because they were shot at - the one I traded in was on original factory linings and discs  at 39,000 miles with loads of meat left on the linings, shows the quality of these components  has dramatically reduced, on later cars- this sort of trend is worrying as where alse are Skoda cutting corners to keep costs down, in order for VW Group to pay off all the American customer base complaints about Diesel gate.

[peter_k]

Really p*ssed off with Skoda - suggestions as to any possible further action.  It seems that the MOT requirements can be summarised as "OK if the braking performance meets minimum standard and discs look like there is no excessive wear".  I'd love to know what the rear brake performance is in an emergency stop with soaking wet discs - lots of pits to hold water that can boil off and steam lubricate the friction surfaces. 

The pictures below are my old 25k mile rear discs.  At the last service on 14/1/2019 at 23.3k miles the "Vehicle Health Check"  advised  that "Rear Disc/Drums Condition" as "Visually OK" .  I raised the  issue of the rear disc condition when booking the service and when dropping the car off.  Skoda's servicing schedule doesn't involve removing the wheels - is this acceptable?

 

Inside faces

 

Outside faces

 

Finally - the "paint" finish on the replacement Brembo discs

[Zid2000]

Are these horrible original ones TRW (a member in the other thread said he’s were OEMed by them?) or ATE (skoda-parts.com lists them as one more OEMs apart from TRW and next to “Skoda genuine part”) or someone else?

[GAG]

If the discs are according to  Skoda "acceptable"  with nothing wrong with the braking efficiency why don't they look like that when the car is brand new . Why do the front discs not look the same after the same amount of mileage despite being used to provide more braking than the rear brakes..... answer.... because the rear brake discs must be made of inferior steel.  

[J.R.]

On 20/04/2019 at 11:47, xman said:

 but if its deep, uneven then maximum braking effort may be reduced as the pads are not making full orthogonal contact and the brake area for pads (also grooved) that apply full pressure is effectively reduced.

 

 

 

Actually it creates a bigger surface area but I am not arguing with what you say regarding reduced efficiency, not sure what orthognal means though!

 

All 4 discs were appaling on my car when I bought it at 122K miles, they had all been replaced once, the rears twice, it braked OK and had no problems with efficiency, handbrake efficiency or imbalance on the CT test rollers (French MOT) so I sort of can see where Skoda are coming from.

 

I replaced them all anyway and was shocked to find that once I could see the inside faces they were far far worse than the outers which were appaling anyway, the rears had maybe a 3/4" tramlined strip left that was not completely corroded away to brake with.

 

I am not too concerned with tramlines, its always been the case with asbestos free friction material and drivers who are light on the brakes, the glazing that usually accompanies it does trouble me so when I detect it I abuse the brakes until its cut through, severe corrosion though means that no braking effort is taking place on that part of the disc and its plain to see on inspection, the remaining friction material will rapidly overheat and cause brake fade if really put to use and/or when towing a heavy load in mountainous terrain, Skoda whould instantly replace any discs like this front or rear because when you really start to use the brakes the rears do a,lot of work.

[xman]

2 hours ago, J.R. said:

 

Actually it creates a bigger surface area but I am not arguing with what you say regarding reduced efficiency, not sure what orthognal means though!

 

 

 

Brake effort is determined by the pressure exerted by the pad friction material against the disc. It achieves a maximum when the pad and disc are perfectly flat and the force applied is orthogonal (at right angles). Ridges or grooves means at best that force can only be applied at an angle in those areas , and so friction is reduced.

[J.R.]

Gotcha, takes me back 44 years to the Mechanical Science lessons for ONC/HNC!

[Mickey43]

My rear discs are in similar crap condition after 39k miles.  Was advised by Skoda at the last service that the brakes pads are fine, the car braking system is fine, and that I should not need to change the discs for now.  Fronts are perfect.

 

Car brakes perfectly, no squeals or scrapes so I'm happy enough with that.   They do look terrible though.

[digifish]

On 23/04/2019 at 17:36, Mickey43 said:

My rear discs are in similar crap condition after 39k miles.

 Are you launching a boat into the sea down a ramp on the weekends?

[kewals]

Although by now all know Skoda discs are so poor, I thought will share my experience in old thread. Changed all front and rear at 48500 miles/ 5 years, started to hear grinding noise and some rear pads were shot. Discs look horrendous but amazingly measuring thickness they still had ...in theory (poor surface affects braking efficiency I think)....few mm of life left. Similar most pads had 4-6mm life left but 2 rear pads were destroyed by poor disc surface. I recon could do 100000 miles looking at thickness if not for the poor quality. I was surprised inside of front discs looked much worse then outside. After shopping around (independent garages, kwikfit/National (just to check prices -, one of them quoted £725 for all discs/pads - Delphi), Skoda dealer came much cheaper at  £417 for Ferrodo Premier and got my business. Did not fancy to buy myself with garage fit only and do not have fitting warranty in case bought parts would have defects. Dealer told me part of the problem with rear disc poor "cleaning" how he called it could be my engine braking....not convinced...My work pal 1 year old Golf has poor rear discs as well, front looks good.

 

[Ivan8192]

@kewals Would you explain if the Skoda dealer offered you a range of replacement brands, or if you said what you wanted, or if you supplied the parts? Thanks. 

[kewals]

Hi Ivan,

Sorry just noticed your query today. They would not supply range of brands (I asked initially for cost of Brembo, Pagid etc.) as they have one supplier of aftermarket parts (they don't want to have to set up new accounts for different supplier etc. just for me- I think it is fair enough). Their supplier was representative of Ferrodo so I went with this as reading online forums it seemed Ferrodo Premier should be decent. Skoda replacement parts would be more than £200 more than Ferrodo Premier so I kindly declined that

[ewlmr]

Might be an urban myth... But I have read a couple of times in a Swedish Skoda Facebook group lately that some modern VAG cars drag or apply the brakes intermittently when rain is detected by the rain sensors. Sounds a bit crazy but might explain the premature rotors/pads wear in wet climates like UK/Sweden?

Haven't been able to find any info/threads on English that confirm its true...