Improving Factory Brakes

NashMan

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Aug 5, 2005
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Never said mine will never crack, you made it out like they will crack with in a week of use. I am over half the life of my rotors as well just about time for new set

and I drive my shit hard with in limts of the speed limt some what

it all comes down to the casting and how there drilled and prepped after words.
 

Poodles

I play with fire
Jul 22, 2006
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NashMan;1798560 said:
Never said mine will never crack, you made it out like they will crack with in a week of use. I am over half the life of my rotors as well just about time for new set

and I drive my shit hard with in limts of the speed limt some what

it all comes down to the casting and how there drilled and prepped after words.

Yes, and when they fail from the cracking, what happens then?
 

Supracentral

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Mar 30, 2005
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NashMan;1798560 said:
and I drive my shit hard with in limts of the speed limt some what

it all comes down to the casting and how there drilled and prepped after words.

For that kind of driving, you're probably right. I drive my car to its limits, sometimes on Road Atlanta. Coming into turn 10a, my rotors will glow orange. Slotted rotors crack under those conditions easily.

As IJ said:

IJ.;1798556 said:
Might come down to time/miles used and driving style.

Do whatever works for you.

Poodles;1798563 said:
Yes, and when they fail from the cracking, what happens then?

Bad brake pulsation, pulling to one side and excessive pad wear generally. It's usually nowhere near as catastrophic as a cracked rim.
 

Supracentral

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IBoughtASupra;1798573 said:
Mike, when you say not to run the drilled setup on a road car, do you mean street or road coarse. Just wanted to verify.

Personally I don't like them. You can achieve the same pad outgassing with slotted rotors without the risk of cracking as easily. Hard pull downs from high speed highway runs can do it. Road course definitely will do it eventually. For most street driving, it might take a long time, possibly never, it really depending on how hard you drive. One mans causal ride in the country is another guys run of insanity. It's really a matter of perspective.

One thing to note is all iron discs can experience cracking, not just crossdrilled. Crossdrilling just makes it more likely to happen. Here's something most people don't know; The angled vanes in a non-solid rotor were put there to help stop cracking. The theory was that by placing a solid vane along the path of a crack would stop it. The cooling aspect was a secondary design result, not the primary reason.

Slotted rotors are a better choice IMO, the shallow sharp edges of the radial grooves provide leading edges for bite and way for hot gasses and ablated friction material from the pad to exit. This ensures full pad contact even under brutal braking conditions. They are a far superior design if you feel the need to run something beyond a solid disc.

However, on my car I run solid discs. When you're stressing the brakes as much as I do on a road course, solid discs are the best design IMO.
 

NashMan

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Supracentral;1798576 said:
Personally I don't like them. You can achieve the same pad outgassing with slotted rotors without the risk of cracking as easily. Hard pull downs from high speed highway runs can do it. Road course definitely will do it eventually. For most street driving, it might take a long time, possibly never, it really depending on how hard you drive. One mans causal ride in the country is another guys run of insanity. It's really a matter of perspective.

One thing to note is all iron discs can experience cracking, not just crossdrilled. Crossdrilling just makes it more likely to happen. Here's something most people don't know; The angled vanes in a non-solid rotor were put there to help stop cracking. The theory was that by placing a solid vane along the path of a crack would stop it. The cooling aspect was a secondary design result, not the primary reason.

Slotted rotors are a better choice IMO, the shallow sharp edges of the radial grooves provide leading edges for bite and way for hot gasses and ablated friction material from the pad to exit. This ensures full pad contact even under brutal braking conditions. They are a far superior design if you feel the need to run something beyond a solid disc.

However, on my car I run solid discs. When you're stressing the brakes as much as I do on a road course, solid discs are the best design IMO.


I agree with every thing listed above but only 2 things jump out at me

1 the spiral vane rotor was a made as improved air pump

http://www.google.com/patents/US20080132396

2 regular slotted rotor incress pad\rotor temperature's for race base pads and easily eat pads rather quickly, since the pad is cut on every pass (reson this happens is form rotor quiver)
slotted do stop pad gassing\hydroing from water contact , but a drilled will out perform the slotted, then there is power slot they kinda do both

I have them on my dad's 4x4 hunting truck they work quite well in the water but heat up the pads rather quickly and fad out useing hawk hps

I hate hawk hps pads they suck.... but I have not tried them all, I know there race ones eat rotors like there were made of clay from the sets I have in stall on hondas and such, and were like alot


the only thing that I will not under stand is drilled and slotted rotors thou's are just for show and point less
 
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Supracentral

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NashMan;1798623 said:
1 the spiral vane rotor was a made as improved air pump

http://www.google.com/patents/US20080132396

That patent filing is for a centrifuge. And the patent application for that is from 2006 -- Brake rotors with vanes have been around for 40+ years. That may be the design goal of that specific patent, but it's not the original intent of the original rotor design for automotive brakes.

Regardless, there's a lot of subjective opinion on this topic, but it's worth noting that neither NASCAR, Formula One, ACO or ALMS use slotted or drilled rotors. You have to ask, if cross drillng and slotting are the shit, why don't they use them? Another consideration is that the "pad cleaning" and outgassing aren't as important today as they were 40+ years ago. 1950's and 60's pads were horrible when it came to outgassing and grit. Modern street and race pads don't outgas very much, brake technology, like tire and oil technology have changed considerably over the last 40 years and a lot of "conventional wisdom" isn't wise anymore. Slotted rotors do give more bite, but there's a heat penalty and pad wear issue there as well.

In the end you have to look at the braking system as a single system. The pads, the rotors and the calipers all work together. A caliper/rotor combo that works great with a street pad might not work so well with a race pad or vise-versa.

There's also a driveability consideration. My setup has very high initial bite and the pads need a little heat in them before they perform consistently. For me, this isn't a problem -- I'm used to it, I know how to drive it and I compensate for it. (Remember I also run R-Compound rubber on the street, so I'm not a good example of the "average" guy) Someone else getting in the car might have problems stopping at first and then would be bouncing their head off the steering wheel once the pads took a little heat. The few people I have let drive my car have all noted the doesn't behave or perform like the average street car. Again, it's all subjective opinion. I spent years on public roads driving a Pro Street car with a 572 cu in big block and a 12-71 Blower, so what I call streetable might be considered undriveable by someone else.
 

NashMan

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I am going to poke this with stick I hope you don't mind, nascars don't really use there brake's much mostly gearing besides coming to a stop and ALMS/nsacar all use diffent type's of slotting this is the j hook type but other teams run different typs of slotting some may not going to google all the teams cars

corvette-c6r-brake-disc.jpg


all pads gas there no way around it even full metallic or ceramic and carbon

the zr1 has drilled rotors to get rid of gassing and for initiall bite because they need heat to stop so this helps alot with out needing the heat

zr1brake.jpg






but still hoping some one can answer my qestion, do yellow stuff pads eat rotors? because I am going to need a new set of pads for when I get my car running again
 

wiseco7mgt

dirty mechanic
Aug 12, 2007
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I used to buy from a company called RDA when i managed a parts shop years ago and they told me of a few companies that still drilled there discs even though they were aware of the cracking issues. RDA used a dimpling design which didn't effect the structural integrity of the disc, so no cracking issues. I think they still make them.
 

NashMan

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wiseco7mgt;1798738 said:
I used to buy from a company called RDA when i managed a parts shop years ago and they told me of a few companies that still drilled there discs even though they were aware of the cracking issues. RDA used a dimpling design which didn't effect the structural integrity of the disc, so no cracking issues. I think they still make them.

bet it's just for show, power slot did the same thing but I am pretty sure they dropped the idea now since it is no longer on there web site

Power%20Slot%20Dimpled.jpg
 

IJ.

Grumpy Old Man
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NashMan;1798776 said:
what would you use as a comparison?


pads I have ran are

stock oem
trd
hawk hps
proter feild rs
It's a 2 tonne SC400 with a blower, he ran the Mk4 callipers with Toyota pads on Cryo'd 4000 DBA rotors and it destroyed them in a very short time, the Yellows on Cryo'd 5000's would be maybe 1/4 the wear in about the same time, I have enough confidence in this combination that it's on my new project as I'm MUCH easier on brakes than Al is.
 

toyotanos

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Kinda wish I had gotten a ride with him. V says I'm an aggressive driver, so if you say he's bad, I'm definately interested :D
 

destrux

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May 19, 2010
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I run the EBC yellowstuff on mine. I only have about 4000 miles on them, but I do alot of city driving, so I stop alot per mile.

So far barely any rotor wear, they only screech during low effort/low speed stops after I beat the hell out of them for a hour on a back road (and this goes away after a dozen or so "normal" stops), and the pads are only about 10% worn at this point. When I'm driving normally the pads work like stock, no noise... but with much better bite (not annoying or grabby, but perfect IMO). I haven't been able to boil the fluid or overheat the pads to the point they stop working, but the rotors have turned blue.

I never liked the EBC redstuff, I ran those on another car of mine and they overheated too easily. Hawk HP+ were much better on that car, and the yellowstuff on this car remind me of the HP+ on my other car.

I run solid rotors. My experience with drilled rotors is that they rust much faster from the hot gasses constantly entering the vane area, so that alone makes them not worth using (to me).

Also should mention my car weights 500 pounds less than stock, which has an effect on the amount of energy the brakes are asked to dissipate, so YMMV.
 

IJ.

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toyotanos;1798785 said:
Kinda wish I had gotten a ride with him. V says I'm an aggressive driver, so if you say he's bad, I'm definately interested :D
He doesn't have a lot of finesse ;)

I had the AP Racing callipers on my Mk3 and never went though a set of pads, it had over 75k KM's on them and still servicable.
 

NashMan

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hummmmm one last question, I know the hps plus dusted really bad and they made shit load of noise on my buddies bimmer in traffic he change them out because of this....... but they did stop really well when they heated up.


does the yellows stuff fall into this bracket of issues?
 

IBoughtASupra

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So Ian would you think the EBC pads with Brembo rear calipers and STI rotor retrofit would be even better than just using the EBC pads alone?