It was suggested to replace my brakes as soon as possible due to them being honest heavily rusted. You can see a picture below. I'm not sure whether what I was told is right because, as I see, rust is not on the rotor, only on the pad. While I know rust can spread quickly, I don't see any imminent danger. I'm going to ask for a second opinion from a professional soon, but in the meantime I would like to ask the SE community: do my brakes need replacement?
160k 30 30 gold badges 253 253 silver badges 495 495 bronze badges asked May 18, 2017 at 14:08 81 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badgesIt's fine. That's nothing. That looks like a fairly dry climate vehicle. Snowy area vehicles survive with much heavier surface rust.
Commented May 18, 2017 at 14:30 I would say yes. My cars have been failed in safety inspections for much less rust than that. Commented May 18, 2017 at 14:38The rust doesn't look like an issue, but they do look like they may be worn, you should measure them with a brake caliper and make sure they are within the manufacturer's tolerance.
Commented May 18, 2017 at 15:22Without having seen the backside of the rotor or the thickness of the brake pads themselves, from what I can see I'd say your brakes are far from needing changed, and especially not due to any little bit of surface rust which is present.
For the rust which is present, it is easily explained. When brakes are used they get very hot. Except for a few exterior coatings which prevent this, most coatings/paint heat up and peel off, leaving a nice fresh surface of bare metal behind (even more so if there's no coating in the first place). As you probably well know, bare iron or steel will rust very easily. The cast iron of this rotor is no exception.
The apparent smoothness of the side of your rotor we can see leads me to believe you have plenty of pad left at least on this side (the inside may be a different story). Usually when the brake pads get shallow, they start digging into the rotor and will cause all kinds of valleys and ridges. They may be large or small, but you'll definitely start seeing relief on the rotor surface (not always, but in a VAST majority of the cases). As smooth as this is, I'm not seeing replacement being an issue. As someone else stated somewhere, if you're at 5mm thickness of the pad, consider changing it soon. If you're less than that, you really need to get it changed for safety reasons.
From seeing what we can, I'd not have an issue using these brakes. They look in fine shape.
