Corrosion Test

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So in the spirit of DIY Guy's gun oil test, I'm doing a little mini at-home corrosion prevention test of a couple of garage lubes I had laying around. Unfortunately I did not have room for everything I wanted to test, but many of them HAVE been tested. My goal was to provide a little home comparison information for my own decisions. As such, THIS TEST WILL NOT STAND UP TO RIGOROUS SCRUTINY. Please feel free to enjoy any results but it is nothing more than a quick, diy, at home comparison.

To begin with I took a used front brake rotor (Ford OE part, possibly 80k miles but remarkably little wear), sanded it down by hand with some coarse wet/dry paper and cleaned it off real good with non-chlorinated brake cleaner. There are a few dents and divots which aren't perfect but overall it should do well for this test. I then divided it into eight parts to test the following (In clockwise fashion from the top):

1. PP 5w30
2. Chevron Supreme 10w30
3. Kano Microil
4. Tri-Flow Superior Lubricant, drip bottle
5. Boeshield T9, drip
6. Fluid Film, non-aersol
7. Fluid Film, aerosol
8. Mobil 1 ATF
Added:
9. Super-Lube Silicone Oil, small area on rotor hat
10. Control, the rest of the rotor hat (which was sanded and prepped along with the braking surface)

All samples were applied in the same fashion, by wetting a piece of blue shop towel and "buffing" onto the rotor surface. No further treat was done (no wipe off, no heat treat, ect). I would say that the "buffing" on didn't seem to leave a very heavy coating but felt analogous to how I would wipe down any gun part which didn't specify a "run wet" type of condition (i.e. my glock rails have more oil but my shotgun receiver has about this amount).

At this point in the test, the samples are sitting in a non-climate controlled garage in 90+F daily high temps and high humidity. I have seen tools rust in a few weeks if not wiped down. Unsure the "best" way to progress from here. A good long term test would be to just leave the rotor unmolested for a few months and see what holds up best. This would be a great test for storage applications. Alternatively, I could move it outside into any type of spot ranging from primarily sunny (weather permitting) to shady and damp. It is currently early fall in Michigan, so the weather will be (or should be) rapidly cooling and becoming wetter. Open to input. Pics below.
 
Sounds like a cool test.
I guess you now get to take 1 pic a month.

Then at the end of 6-12 months you get to do a lot of detailed pics and write up.

If you are really bored you can go longer than 12 months.
 
Will you keep the blue tape on to try to prevent one section from segregating into another?
 
Looking forward to the "results" too.

Upon rotating my wheels for the first time I was amazed how much white crud there was.
I used a wire wheel to decrud where rotor and alloy wheel touched.

I carefully sprayed the rotor-to-wheel mating surfaces with 5-56 in order to stave off such corrosion.
I'll tell you how that works when next I rotate.
 
Brake rotors are a good test medium. They really LIKE TO RUST! When I wash my vehicles, by the time I get them dried off, the rotors are covered with a nice light coat of rust. Just from sitting there for 15 minutes after rinsing the wheels. I swear, you can actually watch them rust, sitting in the driveway. I've never seen anything made from metal rust so fast in my life!
 
Originally Posted By: billt460
Brake rotors are a good test medium. They really LIKE TO RUST! When I wash my vehicles, by the time I get them dried off, the rotors are covered with a nice light coat of rust. Just from sitting there for 15 minutes after rinsing the wheels. I swear, you can actually watch them rust, sitting in the driveway. I've never seen anything made from metal rust so fast in my life!


Next time when you will buy new discs...try to buy OEM/quality ones...

ATE Pagid etc tend to rust less then cheapo no name ones
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Originally Posted By: Kamele0N
Next time when you will buy new discs...try to buy OEM/quality ones...


All of my rotors ARE OEM. I've never changed them. They came with the vehicle.
 
I only buy corrosion resistant rotors when possible (generally not available for rear rotors unfortunately). I put ATE Powerdiscs on my old Fiat, they aren't rusting, and they somewhat improved the feeling when braking
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Cool test!

Here are the results: 1st place: Boeshield
2nd place: Fluid film liquid
3rd place: fluid film aerosol
4th place: Tri-flow
grin2.gif
 
Originally Posted By: billt460
Here ya' go. One of the best....... WD-40.

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/lid=10700...t-Preventatives


They have a specialized rust preventative that has kicked major butt in several home tests. It, Hornady's One Shot, and Frog Lube held off rust the best. I use Frog Lube on my super finely blued guns as a rust preventative only as it sucks as a lube. Plus I got a few tubs of it free.
 
So update a couple months later. This has been sitting under the rear bumper of my mustang (parked for winter) on the garage floor approximately 2 feet from the garage door. The garage is virtually always closed except for a few times where I was shoveling snow. The rotor did get some light snow dusting at those times from wind. Rotor looked completely clean until this recent thaw so I believe condensation expedited the rusting; this possibly explains the uneven rusting even within the same section. I don't feel very confident in these results, though.

Looking at the rotor it is clear that the Boeshield T9 excelled while all the other products performed similarly. 10w30 did OK, as did the aerosol Fluid Film. Surprisingly the non-aerosol fluid film seems to have more corrosion than the aersol and this does not make sense. In addition to that surprising finding, looking at the uneven rusting I suspect that somehow this test has been skewed. I also found it interesting that the Super-Lube silicone oil provided no perceivable corrosion protection, though it was a very small test area (note labeled section of rotor hat).

 
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