Originally posted by UVA6Speed
not all metal oxidizes into "rust", just iron. But few metals are as easy to cast, good conductors or heat, cheap, and strong. Leaving the quick to rust iron the metal of choice.
Do not bother painting your rotors, all it takes is one trip down a mountain and even 1200 is toast (rust from underneath)..speaking from personal experiance.
My Baer track SS brakes for my camaro are Zinc coated and the vented fins and edge of the rotor still rusted with time.
The higher carbon steel the better for rust, but worse at being able to take radical changes in heat..as in you heat your brakes up then drive through a puddle of water.
So any solution? none that I can think of. Btw carbon brakes like on the GT2 and other high end track cars that come as "race only" options are really ended for track use only seeing how the do not preform well cold.
Word. Only non-ferrous materials like ceramic and carbon graphite (carbon fiber as well) brake rotors would not rust. They're used in Porsche 911 Turbos and other expensive and sporty cars. The problem with ceramic rotors are that they take quite a bit of heating up to provide a good friction surface and to not squeal.
If you're willing to spend quite a bit on rotors, the only solution I can think of is to treat the outside "rim" of the rotor and the vent vanes to a higher carbon steel. Or even weld the vanes to the iron rotors. But that's $$$ and time to engineer a good solution. The good thing is that when you have big rotors, you can't easily notice the rust on that "rim" of the rotor as well.