Ok, I KNOW I've seen the answer to this somewhere..but for the life of me, I can't find it. Please humor me.

I have new brake rotors awaiting install on my 4Runner. However, I left them outside in the rain for a few weeks on accident and they're COVERED in THICK rust. I know minor rust burns off as soon as you go..but this is pretty bad. How should I go about getting it off of there? Naval jelly? Sandpaper? Steel wool?

 

just use a scotch brite scrubbing pad and all should be fine. start with a coarse one then finish off with a finer one, once you install them and hit the brakes the first couple of times, any remaining rust will be gone.

lee

 

What kind of rotors are they? If they are anything other than Brembo, I would take them to Autozone/Advance/Napa/whatever to get them turned to make sure the surface is as good as possible before installing them.

 

They're cheapo Duralast Autozone Rotors.

 

mine are out in the weather rusting on the axle, fresh out of the box. ah well, it's a trail rig, nothing that isn't going to happen when i'm not driving it anyhow.

 

If it was only outside for a matter of month or so it cant be bad enough to need major resurfacing, just slap them on and slam the brakes a few times in an open area and they'll be good as new. I've had rotors sitting outside for alot longer than that and not done anything to them before use and they were fine. You'll spend two hours trying to fix something you could make go away in 2 minutes on the truck.