Agreed, but they're still drilled/slotted right?
Also agreed, which is sad. I cannot imagine having a high performance vehicle and not wringing it's neck from time to time.
Drilled/slotted or smooth rotors?
- Thread starter VIKING_MECHANIC
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Some are. To be honest, I don't know if the drilling is a problem with that material, I would assume it's not.
I'd argue that drums actually have better stopping power. The main reason to switch to discs is ease of maintenance. When drums go out of adjustment your braking power drops significantly. Discs are consistent, right up until the piston grinds away and falls out of the caliper.
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Have you met high-end car owners? It's all about the perception of performance, and they expect to see race-style parts - whether or not racers still use those parts. Few of them actually track cars regularly.
VIKING_MECHANIC
GMT 400 obsessed Swede.
There's a reason drums are still standard on most trucks and cars and have been for the last 50+ years. They are cheap and easy to maintain(for the most part) under "normal" use.
Although I'll admit, that for the longest time I didn't really understand how to work on them until one day I had a drum off one of my trucks and messed with them too much till the point the drum would not slide back on. Spent several hours learning what to do.
Also, the right tools really help...
$200,000 cars don't have shiity Chinese "drilled 'n' slotted" rotors that then get put into fancy boxes to be sold for ordinary passenger cars and trucks.
Wild Guess: The cracking problem with typical drilled/slotted rotors is not because they're drilled and/or slotted per se. It's because they're cheap-junk rotors to begin with, that get drilled/slotted on high-speed milling machines with little or no post-maching stress relief/heat treatment/deburring. The drilling just makes things worse, providing additional places for stress to concentrate.
It's all about the higher profits--selling image/bling, not "performance".
Wild Guess: The cracking problem with typical drilled/slotted rotors is not because they're drilled and/or slotted per se. It's because they're cheap-junk rotors to begin with, that get drilled/slotted on high-speed milling machines with little or no post-maching stress relief/heat treatment/deburring. The drilling just makes things worse, providing additional places for stress to concentrate.
It's all about the higher profits--selling image/bling, not "performance".
VIKING_MECHANIC
GMT 400 obsessed Swede.
I think the term you are looking for is marketing.
Baer claims to be 100% US sourced and machined by them and I've cracked those.
someotherguy
Truly Awesome
Great conversation so far; I've kind of avoided throwing my 2 cents in because this subject usually ends up like oil brand wars. 
HOWEVER.....
Drilled is absolutely, without doubt, at this point - useless, other than marketing. It is literally the perception of performance. In the "old days" racing pad compounds did emit a lot of gas and possibly needed the holes. Modern pads do not.
In reality, drilled rotors can decrease performance, but probably only a negligible amount. A brake rotor's job, oversimplified, is a heat sink. It converts kinetic energy into heat energy. The quicker it can absorb, then dissipate, that heat, the better. A drilled rotor has less mass to do this job with. Could you tell the difference? Probably not..
Slots, on the other hand, can be beneficial. They help prevent pad material buildup on heavy braking, which results in "hot spots" that most people mistake as "warped rotors."
A great example are the SRT cars with the Brembo brakes. The first SRT8's had smooth rotors. There were "warping" issues (pad material buildup) that Brembo rectified with slotted rotors. Mopar TSB'd them at their expense. Later when the Hellcat hit the scene with 15.4" 2-piece front rotors ($$$) those were slotted, as well. The newest Hellcat brakes have less slots than the prior version, but are still slotted. Brembo isn't doing this for marketing purposes.
Do note none of those (OEM) Brembo SRT parts are drilled..
Richard
HOWEVER.....Drilled is absolutely, without doubt, at this point - useless, other than marketing. It is literally the perception of performance. In the "old days" racing pad compounds did emit a lot of gas and possibly needed the holes. Modern pads do not.
In reality, drilled rotors can decrease performance, but probably only a negligible amount. A brake rotor's job, oversimplified, is a heat sink. It converts kinetic energy into heat energy. The quicker it can absorb, then dissipate, that heat, the better. A drilled rotor has less mass to do this job with. Could you tell the difference? Probably not..
Slots, on the other hand, can be beneficial. They help prevent pad material buildup on heavy braking, which results in "hot spots" that most people mistake as "warped rotors."
A great example are the SRT cars with the Brembo brakes. The first SRT8's had smooth rotors. There were "warping" issues (pad material buildup) that Brembo rectified with slotted rotors. Mopar TSB'd them at their expense. Later when the Hellcat hit the scene with 15.4" 2-piece front rotors ($$$) those were slotted, as well. The newest Hellcat brakes have less slots than the prior version, but are still slotted. Brembo isn't doing this for marketing purposes.
Do note none of those (OEM) Brembo SRT parts are drilled..
Richard
I think the SRT brakes (SRT cars in general tbh) benefited from Mercedes input. Interestingly, AMG cars still have drilled rotors, and the brake performance on the big cars is perhaps even more impressive than the motors.Great conversation so far; I've kind of avoided throwing my 2 cents in because this subject usually ends up like oil brand wars.
Drilled is absolutely, without doubt, at this point - useless, other than marketing. It is literally the perception of performance. In the "old days" racing pad compounds did emit a lot of gas and possibly needed the holes. Modern pads do not.
In reality, drilled rotors can decrease performance, but probably only a negligible amount. A brake rotor's job, oversimplified, is a heat sink. It converts kinetic energy into heat energy. The quicker it can absorb, then dissipate, that heat, the better. A drilled rotor has less mass to do this job with. Could you tell the difference? Probably not..
Slots, on the other hand, can be beneficial. They help prevent pad material buildup on heavy braking, which results in "hot spots" that most people mistake as "warped rotors."
A great example are the SRT cars with the Brembo brakes. The first SRT8's had smooth rotors. There were "warping" issues (pad material buildup) that Brembo rectified with slotted rotors. Mopar TSB'd them at their expense. Later when the Hellcat hit the scene with 15.4" 2-piece front rotors ($$$) those were slotted, as well. The newest Hellcat brakes have less slots than the prior version, but are still slotted. Brembo isn't doing this for marketing purposes.
Do note none of those (OEM) Brembo SRT parts are drilled..
Richard
stutaeng
I'm Awesome
I don't have anything meaningful to say about drilled rotors or anything, but in my office parking garage there's this Posche SUV, not sure the model but it's the sportier version.
Anyway, the rotors are freaking HUGE! I'm a bit exaggerating, but those rotors seem larger than the typical compact car's outside diameter tires! Geez!
Anyway, the rotors are freaking HUGE! I'm a bit exaggerating, but those rotors seem larger than the typical compact car's outside diameter tires! Geez!
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