I'm not sure how many folks know this. Though I don't personally road race I try to stay on top of some of the F-body road racing crowd via frrax.com

Anyway, when the C6 Z51 came out we learned that the directional, cross drilled rotors were a bit of a joke. You see, there's only a left side rotor. The rotor on the Passeneger side actually ends up with the cooling vanes facing backwards....there's supposed to be separate right and left part numbers but GM apparently cheaped out.

This is a non issue for street bling types, but for real racers the backward rotor overheats quickly.

Well it turns out the Z06 has the exact same problem. It was so bad LG Motorsports put a set of Stoptech's on their C6 Z06. Read about their experience with their Z here: http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...h&forum_id=100

Anyway, I think this is a huge disaster and frankly its a sad joke GM was too cheap to put correct directional rotors on their flagship car. Next time you see a C6 Z51 check the rotor hole direction on the pass side...they're facing forward....

 

Yeah, old news.

Kinda odd GM did that.

 

Well I'm just now finding out the Z has the same problem, and I'm just really disappointed in GM over it. They can't even get their flagship car right. I thought we were turning a corner regarding the product. GRRRRRR.....

 

I have to agree that this is very disappointing.

I didn't realize they had done that.

I always have though it was "cheap" when GM would use a direction wheel design, and not make a "mirror image" wheel for the other side... of course, in the 80's and 90's with the C4, they actually DID make the mirror image wheels for it... but every other GM car did not get that treatment.

Obviously, this is much worse, since the wheels are mostly cosmetic, and this is functional.... on their ultimate performance vehicle, no less.

 

Wow, that's both suprising and dissapointing.

 

It also looks like according to Corvetteforum that the holes in the rotors take chunks out of the pads....this is why you don't see drilled rotors on real race cars...notice LG's Z with the Stoptech brakes doesn't have the holes.

In one of the threads somebody quotes a Porche engineer saying that he wants to go to slots instead of holes but Marketing won't let him because everybody thinks the cross drilling is "performance"

 

Lou is a HARDCORE racer......he changed due to hearing about LPE's experience.

Personally, I wouldn't track hardcore with ANY stock brake setup.....but I wouldn't condemn GM for not putting on race pads for street cars....race pads and cool, wet weather is a guaranteed crash.

 

I'm not disapppointed that they didn't put race pads on the car Doug, I'm disappointed that they didn't shell out the cash to have correct right and left side directional rotors instead of all lefts.

I agree with you about the pads. A good set of racing pads will chew up the rotors and until they are hot they don't stop worth a flip...which is not a safe condition for a street car.

But the rotor thing is inexcusable and should be corrected.

 

Yeah, I've known about this before the car debuted.

It's a pain in the ****, but luckily the one sitting in front of my desk is facing to the left so I don't have to be irritated looking at it.

 

That's horrible, especially on the Z06 - I mean what could that have possibly saved them?? A dollar or two per car??

I sure hope GM fixes this soon instead of letting the entire model ride out with everyone laughing at the 'cosmetic-only' Z51 brakes that people shelled out extra cash for.

In fact doesn't that almost do more harm than good, since you'd great more drag/pull on one side of the car, thus causing the car to pull to one side during hard tracking and braking?

 

didn't the C5 blanks have a left and a right? i've got the C5 conversion on my SS and i sware one rotor was driver and the other was passenger.

 

Yes, I have C5 brakes on my car and they are directional R and L. In fact, I understand the Base C6 has the same rotors.. Its the Z51 and Z06 brakes they cheaped out on.

Been reading that Z51 guys are even switching to base brakes just to ditch the joke rotors.

 

okay let me get this straight...

real race cars dont like cross drilled because it eats up the pads...

soo really its better to go slotted...

and the Z06 and Z51 are both liable to lose control at high speeds?

as if one side of the car is going to brake more effectively then the other side... so theoretically if you heat up the brakes enough you'd start to spin... because you were braking on the left side of the car and not the right...

this is a big mistake... because when one gets confident with ones own car one tends to drive to the extreme... i know i've taken both of my cars up to very high speeds... and i know that the thing i was afraid most of after my last incident was my ability to slow down... and i almost hit a truck at 160mph...

soo... all in all if im going to upgrade my brakes i should go with slotted?

 

Honestly, I'd like to see real research on exactly how much of a difference it really makes on anything less than a full out race car.....I'm not saying that there is no effect, but I'd venture a guess that it's minimal at best.

Think about it, inside a wheel, as long as the rotor is spining, it's expelling hot gases due to the fan effect of the vanes inside the rotor halves.

The real problem with pad chunking seems to be that the holes aren't chamfered...and therefore have a cheese grater effect.

 

yea there's some argument on how much difference the rotor direction make..

What immediatly annoying are the pads short track life.. and then to make matters even worse, nobody can find replacements.. GM or aftermarket.. In the thread, one guy got Carbotech to make him a set of pads after senidng over a toasted pad as a template.