Coated vs bare rotors
 

The Mirage needs new pads and rotors. So I am looking at my options and I see that zinc plated rotors are now a thing. I'm thinking this sounds like a good idea because salt is used heavily here. Does anyone else have experience with coated rotors in salty areas?

IMHO, RICE RACERS don't like rusty rotors showing behind bling wheels and expensive brakes. The zinc isn't anywhere useful. You could get high chrome stainless but that's really pricey.

Most plating is almost entirely ineffective. Heat cycles will draw in moisture and cause it to flake off, possibly worse than bare since the plating will hold in the moisture.

Powder coating might work better but again, if moisture can get under it... you're done.

Zinc plated, or zinc alloy?

If plated I wouldn't bother. I probably wouldn't bother anyhow. I live where they don't salt, and 1 day of sitting and my TSX has rust spots on the rotors.

Why does your 5 year old vehicle need new rotors? I'd expect many more miles than that unless I raced, or otherwise spent hours in stop and go driving every day.

For cars I intend to keep long term, I generally find the cheapest ceramic pads I can online. Sometimes I'll see a deal on pads online and order them ahead of needing to replace.

Ecoated rotors fair quite well, but obviously it only delays rust on the parts of the rotors that don’t rub.

Which, who cares about the parts not in contact with the pads?

I replaced a caliper on my wife's Yukon early this year, it was covered in rust in less than a week. Not sure what it was covered in, some kind of silver paint. Just put a new caliper on the rear of my volt and it has the same "paint", I'm sure it won't last long.

The zinc will just melt and burn if it gets hot enough.

The story goes I checked my pads when I got the car which was about a year and a half ago. They had plenty of meat at that time. It has sat a good amount and I'm guessing a slide froze up on it. Also, my sister has had the car for the past two weeks because I have been out of the country, and she had both of her cars go down within a week. She called me the day before returning it and said the front brakes had just started to grind. Oh well.

I ended up going with Raybestos brand coated rotors. I'll give them a shot. They were a whopping $16.90 each on rockauto. The uncoated ones were around $10 (this low price almost makes me cringe, seems too low).

Here is a link to the Raybestos site:

https://www.brakepartsinc.com/raybes...ducts/rpt.html

It doesn't say they're zinc coated, but they use some sort of plating technology to coat the entire rotor. This means the vanes, and hub all have at least a bit more rust protection. Other brands claim this coating helps the rotor not seize to the hub. I have run into this twice on Fords where I had to beat the rotor off the hub which broke it into pieces.

Oh plus you don't want a shinny non friction surface.
As the brakes heat up inferred emissivity becomes very important.
A shinny surface can lose heat by ir emission by around 1/3 as fast as a dull dark one as they heat up.