1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Chris - -
Don't throw these out. If you don't want to do anything at all to them just offer them as sweetener to the potential buyer of your car. Or:
Try running a palm sander over the rusty surfaces. I don't know how wet they got, how many times and for how long they sat wet. But living up here in the salt-slush northeast, I've had lots of experience with rusty rotors on various cars.
Usually, if a car has been sitting for a while it develops rust on the rotors. If it's not too heavy simple use quickly wears it off.
The real trouble comes from rust scale, hard dark stuff that is harder than the cast iron and wears away brake pads rather then being worn away by them, and that is slipperier (lower friction) than iron so braking goes bad.
If a rotor has this heavy rust on its braking surfaces, it's pretty much junk though a light cleanup cut might get it off. Hereabouts, it starts on the outer edge and at inner hub of the rotors, and gradually over the years will grow further and further out onto the braking surfaces. At pad change time I routinely try to eliminate all rust on the outer (vent) edge of the rotors, first usually by tapping with a hammer, then sometimes by grinding with a cutoff wheel or by holding an old file up against the edge, carefully, with a wheel off and the car in gear and running. Also I try to do the same on the hub where the braking surface starts.
Bad rust scale has to be everywhere on the braking surfaces for a rotor to be junk, and that's a more rare occurrence. I doubt your Zimmermans have rust this heavy. Rust scale overall usually happens on rear rotors when calipers are frozen up and the car is left that way for a couple years. Or when a car is left parked in a very moist area, outdoors, for several years. (The rotors ON your car probably DO have this kind of heavy rust if it has sat as long as you say.) If you can sand a little patch on the Zimmermans, even by hand, and quickly see bright metal, then they're surely salvageable and someone will want them.
posted by 71.173.71...
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