Rusted rotors that eat pads away, ever seen this?

Yeah yeah, this post is useless without pics, I know, they'll be posted tonight.

I just got back from putting new rotors and such on my sister's '99 Cruiser, which has 50K miles on it. Very little miles for that type of service IMO. However, the previous owner only used the vehicle in the winter and then let it sit all year (in Ohio, where this is, they use LOTS of salt). So my theory is everything under there got crammed with salt and then it sat all year.

The brakes pulsated, starting about 35K miles, we decided to put on new rotors since it would be the easiest thing (versus having them reground, etc). So I pull the old ones off, and holy hell, the inside of both rotors is rusted so bad, it is raised up across most of the disc. The inside pad only had a smooth shiney surface for about the top 1", everything below that on the pad was hitting this nasty, rusty rough surface, which was just eating the pad away. I have never seen anything like this, I would have expected the pad to eat through the rust, but not at all here, this rust wasn't surface rust at all. So it was surprising to me that the brakes even worked at all.

I have also heard that Toyota rotors hardly ever rust, but this must have been an exception (or the salt I mentioned) they were rusted so bad that if you tapped them with a hammer you got probably 1 full handful of rust bits falling off/out of the vents PER time you tapped it.

The pins which the pads slide on were rusted in place, ended up cutting those in pieces with a dremel tool and beating the pieces out. I could not believe how bad everything was in there...I'll post some pics tonight and show you all what I mean, curious if anyone else has had similar problems.

After I got it all finished ofcourse it looks all pretty, everything new, stops on a dime now, no shudder...perfect..

all my rotors get a light coating of rust even after sitting for a week, but never have I seen one with anything like you are talking about.

Ok, here is what I'm talking about, first three pics are of driver's side rotor, next two are of passenger side rotor.








It was very odd, here is a pic of the passenger backing plate, no more rusted than I've seen on other vehicles and on mine...

Wow! That's some severe rust pitting! Glad we don't have to deal with salted roads out here. The "backing plate" is made of plated steel, the rotors are bare iron. Iron rusts in no time at all--like minutes after a car wash.

Were your inner pads were stuck on the sliding pins or in the caliper?

gopriest31 said:

Were your inner pads were stuck on the sliding pins or in the caliper?

Click to expand...

No, inner pads came off fine actually, nothing was stuck to the sliding pins, the sliding pins however were stuck to the caliper, but you could wiggle the pads with their limited movement.

Another thing I learned was 100-series don't have a vacuum booster, they have a electric pump that creates the pressure, I had heard that somewhere but forgot. Well to bleed the brakes apparently that has to be working, so you have to keep the key on "ON" while bleeding the brakes, if not then almost nothing make it out to the back tires, I don't understand why but with that on it worked great, lots of fluid movement, we flushed over a quart through the system, got all of the nasty front caliper fluid out...she's like a new vehicle..