Rusty discs and faulty steering box

A couple of weeks ago I took my just four year old Jimny for a service and WOF (NZ equivalent to an MOT) The Jimny failed the WOF because of b) pitted and rusty front brake discs meaning replacement of front pads and discs, and b) leaking steering box.  I found both of these things to be very surprising in a car that is only just four years old and has less than 36K kilometers on the clock.  As the car is relatively young with low mileage then I would have expected Suzuki to come to the party with some contribution to the cost of repairs as a reputational measure, but they are totally resistant to the idea.  Is this usual in a Jimny?  I have owned cars for nearly 60 years and this is only the second time I've had to replace discs - the first was on a Triumph Vitesse when I let the pads wear down too far back in the day. 

Welcome to the forum. Brake discs are a wear item and I have replaced several sets over the years. But not after 4 years and so few miles, unless it was as part of an upgrade. That said life expectancy will be diminished if you spend a lot of time in severe conditions like dirty water, salt water, mud or repeated high speed stops or towing things that are abrasive, corrosive or going through loads of high temperature cycles. But just pottering around town they should last significantly better. Same really for the seals on the steering box, anything abrasive will shorten the service life. I'm assuming you bought the car new and can vouch for its usage, if not it might be worth raising the point with the supplier if they are a dealer not an individual.

Oh and another thought, in it's 36k has that been regular and frequent smaller trips or irregular and infrequent long trips? My gen4 is the former and seems to be coping reasonably well. My land cruiser on the other hand is the latter and each time I do use it i can hear the pads scrubbing the surface rust off the discs and I'm prepared for that to shorten their service life but I accept it as part of how infrequently the cruiser gets used but even then only doing less than 5 thousand miles a year it hasn't needed discs for the last 6 years.

Has a rep. from Suzuki inspected the car? If not why not? Have they suppled a written statement as to why they will not get involved. To wear out the discs and pads in 36,000 miles means excessive use of the brakes and or running in dry dusty conditions or wet muddy tracks. Either way Suzuki or the dealer would have seen these conditions if they had inspected the car.
Another point. I see so many drivers tail gating that they inevitably need to keep braking to prevent a rear end collision and excess disc and pad wear is inevitable.

Roger

Pitted and rusty discs can happen to any car that doesn't use posh coated discs- there is a Porsche next door that hardly ever moves and the front discs are flat & shiny as a new pin, whereas the discs on my Jimny look like corrugated cardboard with rusty lines.
Lack of use during Covid did for mine, once the pads pick up on a piece of rust you get tram lines.

The back disks on my previous EV looked like they had been at the bottom of the sea for a few years, because they never did any braking, it is all regeneration with a little bit of help from the fronts on an EV.  (I made sure that the current EV has drums on the back...)


The steering box leak is something I'd expect fixed under extended warranty (if they do the Service Activated Warranty in NZ) it shouldn't leak unless it has been covered in mud/sand or something.

Never been on a beach or in the sea (I did have a boat some years ago which I used a Jeep Cherokee to launch, never had a problem with the discs though). Occasional off road - not for it's own sake but to get to hard to access trout fishing streams. Otherwise, main use is around where I live - little city centre or rush hour diving because I'm retired these days. So the car gets no excessive stress.
Yes, I did buy the car new and that may be part of the problem - it was finished in March and delivered in April 2022, but who knows how long it sat around in Japan during Covid. Or maybe it's a number of successive Fridays car.
It because of the attitude of the dealer and Suzuki NZ that I'm asking the question - they don't seem to want to know, blaming conditions - I live near the coast (but there again, so does a large percentage of our population) fo the rusty discs and "seepage" and "breathing" for the steering box - never leaking. I'm looking for other evidence and examples of faulty manufacture