Hoping for some advice on how to address the the brakes on my 69 vert which were generally operating fine before my front calipers started to leak:

Front:
Front rotors have developed gouges- both sides of the rotor on the passenger side but just the outside of the drivers side (inside of the drivers side is fine). See first two pictures below. The worst gouge is about 1/16". Not sure what the cause would be as I just recently purchased the car and only discovered this when I pulled the wheels to rebuild the leaking front calipers. Was planning on rebuilding the front calipers with an o-ring kit per the guidance on this forum, but not sure if I should try and do something to address the rotors before reinstalling the calipers and pads after the caliper rebuild. The rivets are still in place and I've read the difficulties about getting runout right once you separate the rotors from the hubs, so not sure if its worth trying to get the rotors turned.

Rear:
As for the rear, driver's side rotor does not have gouges on either side. The passenger rear only has gouges on the outside (no gouges on inside of the rotor) and the pads have developed a lip at the top of the pad where it is not contacting the rotor (see fourth and fifth pictures attached). The pads on passenger side are thin, while the pads on the drivers side are almost new which leads me to believe the previous owner was fixing things piecemeal. The rivets have been removed on both rear rotors, as you can see in the pictures, so not sure if runout is an issue with the rears.

Trying to decide whether I should (a) leave the current rotors and pads as is (although I would probably replace the passenger rear rotors as they are pretty thin right now), (b) leave the rotors as is but put new pads (as the current pads have developed raised scar due to the gouges- see sixth picture attached) or (c) get the rotors resurfaced and replace the pads. On any other car I would go with option c, but after reading about the runout issues and the durability of the corvette rotors I wanted to get everyone's advice. Ultimately, I would like to get as much life out of these rotors as possible, knowing that I'll likely need to replace them sometime in the future.

 

I would try to have them turned and if not enough for this replace them. Why do it all over again in a short time. IMHO

 

The rotors need to be smooth. Groves and gouges need to be removed and this can only be done by resurfacing them. But there is a minimum thickness they must be BEFORE you can resurface them. New thickness is 1.25". Min thickness to resurface is 1.23, and minimum use thickness is 1.215. Just looking at the pictures, those don't look very good at all.

I just went through this because I wanted to upgrade the pads. The rotors were too thin so I bought stock replacement rotors. One of the front and both rear calipers had started leaking slightly so I bought 4 reman calipers with o-rings. The runout was pretty easy to check and remedy. I bought .001" arbor shims from Grainger and borrowed a dial indicator. The first rotor took about an hour and the other three took maybe 20 min each to get dialed in. Two have .001" runout and the others are zero. It was more than what I wanted to spend but brakes are no place to take shortcuts.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but the o-ring calipers are a little more tolerant of a little runout but I don't know how much they will stand.

 

Wow, are those rivets that contacted the rotors?

 

How important is stopping to you? If that were MY car, I would replace all of the rotors and all of the calipers. You will NOT be able to turn those rotors, they are too far gone. In one pic I see pad on the inside of the rotor and none on the outside. You have caliper issues that have caused rotor problems. The only correct way to fix your issue(s) is to rebuild your brake system. Anything less is just throwing money away.

...Oh, and it's not going to be cheap.

 

Judging by those pictures there is no way to save those rotors. Those gouges look way too deep to ever salvage them by turning.

I would say that new rotors and pads are in order. Try getting a higher quality pad this time and it may prevent that from happening again. Most of the modern pads are bonded and not riveted so you have uniform contact on the rotor.

There are endless debates about this so do your own research but the name 'Hawk' comes up frequently here and seems to be a favorite of many if that matters to you.

 

Replace them, they were not designed to last forever.

 

It looks like someone wore it down to the rivets, and then just put new pads in it.

 

they wore it into the rivets to gouge the rotors. Do not who you bought this car from, or long ago it was, but I would go back to the previous owner and ask him why he did this, he was taking other people lives in jeopardy running brakes like this. IMO, glad he didn't drive around me!!! Well, at least you will get to check out your emergency brakes while you have the rear rotors off.

 

I'm guessing that the PO was rather old and very hard of hearing....

OR could have been young and he/she just kept the ear-buds in and on high volume.