Coated Rotors or non coated

Wondering how many of you use coated rotors (zinc) or just plain rotors? I'm not looking at performance rotors and understand the zinc coating just helps with keeping the rotors from rusting, so they look better longer. Salt is used on the roads where I live for ~6 months of the winter season, so the rears take a beating. I'd be interested in hearing from the people in the northern regions where salt is used on the road. Just wondering if you feel it's worth spending the extra dollars on coated? Do you feel you get better longevity from a rear brake job? There is a ton of material remaining on my pads but the inner and outer part of the rotors have corroded, so that the pads touching those parts are not really effective and are causing a similiar wear pattern on the pads.

I see we're in the same province. Not looking at "performance", just wondering if the coated rotors are worth the extra cost and if they seem to last longer than plain (non-coated) rotors? What do you use and why?

Besides preventing rust on the outside of the rotors the coating also helps keep them from rusting against your winter steelies.

Once you go Zimmerman you'll never go back... it's like they were MADE for Canadian roads.

I have Zimmermans all around and they still look pristine after more than a year.

I have almost 100K on my stock rotors and pads and was planning on putting back the same when I do the brakes, I'm not familiar with Zimmerman rotors ?

Zimmermans are the bomb. Had a set on my 99.5 for over 150K miles and they held up fantastic. The coating keeps rust from getting into the rotor surface and causing issues. They actually wore down the point I needed to replace them. I mistakenly replaced them with napa uncoated and that was a huge goof up. Napa rotors started to pit and flake after only 6 months and look like they were at the bottom of a lake for years. Got another set of zimmermans on order.

Centric Premium rotor. Great rotor, not much money.

Are the Centrics coated or non-coated?

db123 said:

Are the Centrics coated or non-coated?

Click to expand...

The centric premium ones I got (high carbon) had painted "hats" and were coated...COOLING fins on the fronts had a heat resistant paint like coating, so no non contact areas were bare..the COOLING fins, etc..my old MINI/bmw shop guys actually uses them on cars for autocross folks, and has had great luck with them.
Used a set on my MINI...the quality of the machining on the centric premium high carbon rotors appeared to be nicer... only had them on the car about a year before I sold it..so I cannot attest to the longer term use personally, but like I said, the shop I used for non diy basicly said centric premium was their go-to rotor, and the high carbon ones for a couple $ more was a slight upcharge for a slightly better better product.
The oems wore and flaked on the rear (BMW parts) (replaced due to excess rust) and the Zimmermann rotors did better, but did get groved a bit, and did still rust a bit on the rears, but were fine...
Dollar for dollar, I would not hesitate buying either, both IMO are good products, so I would compare them by $$.
I'm guessing the VW parts made by Zimmermann are made to the same standards as the BMW/MINI parts since they are also an OEM for them as well.

db123 said:

Are the Centrics coated or non-coated?

Click to expand...

El cheapo c-tek are not
Premium and high carbon are using what they call "e-coat"

Premium shown



Sent from my iPhone. There may be horrible grammar and misspelling involved

I just installed OEM parts on the front. now I am looking into how to do a break-in procedure or if it is required. The OEM rotor is coated silver all over so I think this might be a Zimmerman part.
I found this.

http://www.otto-zimmermann.de/en/service/faq.html#runinnotive

The recommended procedure would take about 2 hours of driving. Quite unbelievable.

I did take a lot of care to clean the surfaces and even more care to make sure the grease only went where it was supposed to. One thing I didn't do is check runout after the installation. I wonder how often the professionals do this.

In spite of the coating on these rotors, I don't think it will be long before the rotors are rusted. Here in Wisconsin the salt on the roads in winter eventually makes everything corrode.