I bought some Raybestos rear drums for my 1990 Ford Ranger. The drums were so off balance that I put the old drums back on. With the new ones I drove it around the block and you would swear the wheels were out of balance. When I took them off i put them on my bubble balancer and they pinned the bubble to the side. Both were that way. I then put my old ones from Advance Auto on the bubble balancer. Both were dead center. Guess I didn't need those new ones after all.
Raybestos E3 rotors rusting earlier than expected
- Thread starter wing0
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Zimmerman is several steps above and then some.
The game of rust-free-rotors seems to favor a different team every year. my latest buy was brembo, and I black-painted them myself. I think it is StopTech who seemed to get the very best and very worst reviews … but their cryo-treated stuff looked intriguing. The oem ford and honda rotors here have stayed clean and true, and may be brembo products. I got nervous about Bosch, seemed a little lighter than brembo, though people seem to at least have good first impressions. Autozone gold had great coatings but a bit of runout when I tried them.
Brembo has budegt operation in the US. If the don’t have HC designation, it is on par OE stuff that you find on Honda, Toyota, which is mediocre.
EBC is good. Anything ATE, Pagid, Textar or Zimmerman will be best bet, but don’t bet on finding it for Asian vehicles.
Ray’s making those rotors as best as he can.
I just replaced an Akebono + E3 Raybestos rotor combo that had 47k miles on my 07 Fit.
It had about 2k miles at the start on the driver side with a bad caliper piston. This caused the inner pad to begin wearing unevenly. Deposits were insane. I didn’t have time to take apart and address due to a medical issue and I do my own work. The passenger side was fine and wore typical. It had at least a 1/3 pad left, but the driver side inner pad was near the rivets. Might have turned out fine if I trued up the inner pad.
I replaced with the E3 Pads this time and the E3 rotors. TBD if I have another issue going on with the driver side, if the rotor itself was the issue or I had a poor quality Akebono.
Also, I stupidly used brake cleaner on the coating the first time out of habit (never used coated rotors designed to just be installed; without the oil film needing removal and I live in GA so I didn’t actually buy them for the anti-rust they were just the better deal)…that may have accelerated the rust and wearing out of the coating in my case, but obviously after ever so many 10s of Thousands of miles these coatings will wear off.
IMO, it’s perhaps a matter of how delayed the onset of rusting will happen. Perhaps one could determine how well the black e-coated rotors hold up against rust conversely? It may be the coating was not applied properly, poor QC for some like the OP.
It had about 2k miles at the start on the driver side with a bad caliper piston. This caused the inner pad to begin wearing unevenly. Deposits were insane. I didn’t have time to take apart and address due to a medical issue and I do my own work. The passenger side was fine and wore typical. It had at least a 1/3 pad left, but the driver side inner pad was near the rivets. Might have turned out fine if I trued up the inner pad.
I replaced with the E3 Pads this time and the E3 rotors. TBD if I have another issue going on with the driver side, if the rotor itself was the issue or I had a poor quality Akebono.
Also, I stupidly used brake cleaner on the coating the first time out of habit (never used coated rotors designed to just be installed; without the oil film needing removal and I live in GA so I didn’t actually buy them for the anti-rust they were just the better deal)…that may have accelerated the rust and wearing out of the coating in my case, but obviously after ever so many 10s of Thousands of miles these coatings will wear off.
IMO, it’s perhaps a matter of how delayed the onset of rusting will happen. Perhaps one could determine how well the black e-coated rotors hold up against rust conversely? It may be the coating was not applied properly, poor QC for some like the OP.
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I recently replaced the front rotors on my Rav4 hybrid with Centric premium coated rotors on the driver side and Raybestos E3 on the passenger side. I did not intentionally mean to do this at the time I replaced the brakes but the good news is I get to compare the anti-corrosion performance on both rotors since they are exposed to the same environments and I replaced them at the same time. I'll monitor and report back on how they are doing. Right now they have had only one month in Michigan winter and they look as good as new as expected.
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- Oct 15, 2021
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Zimmerman is a great oem that seems to be limited to the German makes. For Japanese, Advics (Toyota OEM) makes a black coated rotor as well with pretty wide aftermarket availability. Looks really promising. Bought them for my Honda because the ones they put out for Toyota look great for a long time, but haven’t had a chance to install them yet. Anyone have any experience with these?
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