Rusty Rotors

[midnightalero01]

is it possible to clean the rust off the rotors or will they stay ugly forever or at least until i can afford new ones

[Grouch]

you can clean'm off with a steel wire brush then paint them. Lots and lots of scrubbing, make sure you get all the rust off before painting. This is of course is for the 'hat' and 'vent' areas not the actual braking surface. Should take care of the problem for a good long while. ;)

[Eh_nigma]

I second that... that is exactly what I ended up doing. It does take some time, and patience, but, once done and painted (with a good paint that is made to help reduce or prevent rust) it stays nice and clean for a while.

As a side note - I did see a car (dare I say, Civic), where once the rotors were brushed clean, the owner had sealed the rusted areas with super glue. Once the glue was dry, he then sprayed them with an Engine Enemal (black in colour). As per what he said, there was no longer a problem with rust. Personally I haven't tried this, so I can't really vouch for it, but, from the looks of his rotors, it didn't look that bad at all.

Ej.

[turtles_ride]

If your talking about the braking surface, it goes away when you use the brakes for awhile, then once it rains they're all rusty again. As for the edges and the part of the rotor the rim touches, mine were actually so rusted that i went out and bought a 4 1/2 inch hand grinder with a twisted circular wire brush attachment to get all the rust off as best i could before painting. And i have to redo them every spring when i switch from my winter rims back to my summer ones. I think the only way to avoid this problem is to get zinc plated after market ones (get em crossdrilled and slotted while your at it off ebay) and i'm not even sure if they keep from rusting. Anyone had zinc plated ones for a couple years that still look nice, or do they go to $hit too after a while?

[Youngblood77]

Originally posted by turtles_ride@Dec 21 2004, 08:02 AM
Anyone had zinc plated ones for a couple years that still look nice, or do they go to $hit too after a while?
Excellent question Turtle. I'd like to know that also. Since buying the rims, I've been thinking about how nasty my rotors look. I'll probably end up re-painting my calipers in the spring, and maybe re-turning the rotors I already have, but if it's worth the cash for the zinc plating, I might just save up some bucks and just buy those instead... Any thoughts?

[AlbinoMonkeyRat]

Zinc corrodes much slower than steel, so zinc coating would be a damn decent idea.
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/MatSelect/corrzinc.htm

[Eh_nigma]

Right on...

[Pimpalero03]

i painted my rotors and calipers when i got my rims. the rotors were brown and after i painted i couldnt believe it

before....

[Pimpalero03]

and after

[midnightalero01]

yeah on second thought... it's not the actual rotor it's the thing between the rotor and the rim... whatever that is called and it's rusty... so is that what you guys were talking about brushing and painting or what
thanks

also what kind of paint did you use?

[bigd6983]

thats a caliper.......and yes its paintable......go to your autoparts store most high temp paint will work.......

[Eh_nigma]

Hey! If anyone can recall, I painted the rotor (and callipers) red on my Alero. Although that was almost 15000 KM ago, and it's covered in dirt, mud, and all that crud, I went just now to go take a look - still no rust. I used red Engine paint (high heat paint as bigd said).

There's two pictures here, not very good (sorry). The first is almost right after the painting. The second was about 4 days ago. You can definately see how dirty the car can get (lots of highway driving through poopty weather), but it's still nice and rust free.

Side Note - the edge of the rotor wasn't shown painted in the pic on the left... it was after the picture. I'll try and get another picture of it at a better angle (although PimpAlero's pictures are a great example.)

[midnightalero01]

Originally posted by Grouch@Dec 21 2004, 01:36 AM
you can clean'm off with a steel wire brush then paint them. Lots and lots of scrubbing, make sure you get all the rust off before painting. This is of course is for the 'hat' and 'vent' areas not the actual braking surface. Should take care of the problem for a good long while. ;)
what do you mean by hat and vent areas? cuz that's probably what's rusted