I have a 2004 Mazda 6 and have been noticing that my brake rotors have been getting rusted. I realize that this is normal after it rains and after driving the pads will wear down the surface rust. The crappy thing about my car is that the pad only covers about 1/3 of the rotor and therefore much of the rotor stays rusted. It really doesn't look good at all... This is happening with all 4 rotors. My question is this normal for the Mazda 6? Is the caliper suppose to be that small that the pad only covers a small portion of the rotor?

 

My 2006 Mazda 6 rotors flash rust too but the pad cleans the entire rotor as soon as the car moves. You might have an alightment problem.

 

The issue is that the pad only covers about half of the rotor. So when the car moves only half the rotor gets cleaned. Not sure why the pad is so small. I guess the caliper needs to be changed to fit a larger pad?

 

This doesn't sound right at all. You've likely got the wrong pads on there or something.

 

but it doesn't look like I can put a larger pad on there... from what I can tell the caliper is too small... I don't know a heck of a lot about brakes but I assume the size of the pad you get is based on the caliper...

 

If you could get us a pic of the problem we may be able to more accurately asses the cause of your problem.

-Cameron Keffer

 

alright thx... I'll try and get a picture for you in the next couple of hours.

 

I don't have pictures from my car's brakes but I found some pics to describe my situation.

My front pads actually cover the entire rotor... notice in the pic the caliper is open.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Di...e_dsc03682.jpg

The rear calipers on my car are enclosed and therefore only allow a one size pad.
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/...calipers-1.jpg

Here's a picture of someone else's car that is having the same issue as me.
http://g35driver.com/forums/attachme...s-img_0151.jpg

They are saying to just paint the section of the rotor that gets rusted. I may look into that option.

 

The paint option seems the cheapest that i can think of, though that's odd that you have this problem man. I'm wondering if your rotors weren't replaced by slightly larger ones.

 

They may have been replaced with slightly larger rotors... but still... my pads only cover 1/3 to 1/2 of the rotor. So unless the rotor was crazy small in the past :P The picture above shows rust for only the bottom portion of the rotor (about 1/4). That rotor still looks a lot better than mine.