After 7 hours hammering and tons of liquid wrench I finally got the front left rotor off, yahoo!
My 97 tour is still on original rotors and they have worn down almost to the ventilation ribs, not to mention the 22.2mm of minimum thickness.
During the process of hammering I cracked both friction surfaces and blew them off the rotor, leaving the "bowl" still rust seized on the hub. This gave my hammer a better way to fight by directly hitting the rim of the bowl. It turned out to be very effective.
By inspecting the removed "bowl" I found it was a belt shaped area on the inner wall of the bowl where it met the rim of the hub that actually rust-seized. Though there were some other minor rust areas, they had been all soaked with liquid wrench and well deformed. That belt came out dry.
Now I'm fighting against the front right rotor. I try to avoid too much hammering as I have to work lying on the floor and hammer with my left hand that has much less power and poor precision. Instead, I drilled a series of holes along the circumference of the "bowl", about ½” from the wheel mounting surface, all the way through to the rust belt and the hub circumference, hoping to weaken the bond of the rust. Now liquid wrench is working in these holes. I'll keep you posted of the result.
One of the members used to try jacking the rotors with two long bolts and the caliper bracket that works as nuts. I followed his idea and tried it, but no go, mainly because I came to worry about the strength of the two ears on the knuckle. They don't seem to be designed to take much sideway forces, and if they break off I'm in deep doo-doo. The thread of the bolt is M12x1.75, by the way.
