At about 600 miles I gave her a wash and notice the rotor surface instantly glaze over in a light rust.
Normal.
Brake rotors are made of cast iron and iron WILL rust when wet.
Iron does rust in the presence of water, oxygen and even more
when salt comes into play. You cannot do anything against that
other than keep them dry and/or brake that light rust away.
I was under the impression that properly bedded brakes would not rust due to a transfer of brake material to the rotor surface. Is this not the case?
Bedding in brake pads doesn't affect rotor rust at all. Nor do
(pseudo) "ceramic" pads help on this.
To be clear, my question here is not aesthetics (rust is ugly, why is it happening) but about functionality (did I not bed the pads in correctly?).
As mentioned, nothing to do with it.
Is there a sure fire way to tell pads have been properly bedded? I did 10 60-to-5 stops followed by a cool off followed by another 10. Several pieces I read seem to indicate that you'll be left with a semi-gloss grey surface on the rotor face but even after looking at pics of this supposedly bedded surface I found it tough to tell the difference.
To me, you have completely overdone this.
Don't get fooled by
forum talk. Stock brake pads don't require 20 stops. If at all, 6 to
10 would have been enough.
At the latest when they start to smell or begin to fade (do require
more pedal pressure) you're done.
Don't worry, after 20 stops from 60
you are definitely done with it.
To be clear, I'm not concerned about having rust on the rotors. What I am trying to figure out is whether I successfully bedded my brakes. I was using the rust metric simply because my understanding of the bedding process, I thought you would have little to no rust on the surface due to the thin layer of melted composite embedded on the surface. If properly bedded brakes can still rust, what is another metric either testable or observable to tell if bedding was successful?
Seems to me someone did promise too much.
Guess I understood your question from the beginning. It's been
quite clear.
.