Most warranties do not cover the brake rotors, as they are a part that undergoes normal wear and tear and should be replaced eventaully anyways.

 

This is never a popular response, but I have had very good luck with Aimco rotors from AutoZone. They are ~$38 each for an LS1 F-body, and hold up much better than stock.

 

Mark,
Not to nitpick, but i would like to throw in my two cents here.
I work at TRW automotive in their Livonia facility, which is their Braking systems research and development facility.

First off, I would like to say I am a co -op student there and not a full time engineer till i get out of school (assuming we both want me to work there at that time). WIth that said, most of this information is second hand and comes fom the senior engineers. Most of it actually come from my former supervisor who was a big autocross guy and former F-body owner.

Slots and cross drills are not for cooling and provide a very minimal amount of cooling. the majority of the cooling comes from the vents and the size of the rotor and its thickness.
The vents can create some pretty nice air flow inside and around the rotor.

The slots and holes do not have a significant amound or air flow around them. Althought this can be debated since real world air flow in that region is a stab in the dark on a good day. It is pretty well agreed upon that those slots and hole do very little for cooling though. The air in there is almost stationary when compared to the vents and the air along side the rotor (particularly outboard braking plate). The air is flowing from left to right (when looking at the rotor head on- looking at the wheel stud holes). Very little air is flowing from the inboard to ourboard rotor plates or vice versa. The air inside the vent holes is pretty stagnant in there compared to the air along the outboard rotor and air in the vents. The vents can work because they utilize the air flowing from left to right, not "into" the rotor. They are like little fans.

Plus the amount of surface area has probobly trippled or quadrroopled with these vents. here is now two more surfaces in the middle (effectivly doubling surface area right there) and the additional surface area of the 4 surfaces of the vent.

If i had to guess, I bet that there is VERY little air flow inside the wheel well t begin with- and particualry under our cars relative to most other cars. The low stance and air dam really should do a good job of making sure air doesn't go crazy under there.

As far as breaking power goes, they will reduce your breaking power since a good percentage of your friction is lost. i'd guess around 10% of your pad is no longer creating any friction.

These slots and holes are for releasing gasses that build up under high heat and pressure of panic stops (or aggresive driving). With the pads used in todays vehicles, there are EXTREMLY little gasses prodeced, if any at all. If there is any, its prety much negligable.

As far as drilling your own (did i read that somewhere?), I am pretty sure.

a. slotted/cross drilled rotors are thicker/stronger than OEM

b. it has to be PEFRECTLY balanced or life will be ****ty

c. It is extremely hard to drill evenely, effectively and safely.
You have to drill correctly (dont crack the rotor!), symetrically (dont throw it off balance) and you CANT HIT ANY OF THE VENTS!. doing the last two tegether will prove to be a challenge since most rotors have a prime number (hence odd) number of vents. This is done purposely do make as FEW LINES of symetry as possible. Less lines of symetry = less noise for a mutitude of reasons over my head, I didn't really get it when my boss explained it to me. So drilling symeticrially and not hitting nonsymetrical vents might prove to be a mathematical nightmare!

In this long winded responce, i kind hoped to get at this. Slotted and cross drilled are realy only good for appearance mods. If anything they will probobly warp and/or crack faster with all things being equal (which they are not for obvious reasons)

Personally, I am going to try some stuff out and see what happens. Although it probobly wont be as cost effective as the LS1 or C5 brake upgrade- I am drawn to doing it. I guess my natural curriousity is doing it to me. I am going to attempt to make two ducts (one for each front rotor) to cool the inboard rotor. Kind of like "ram air" to the rotors if you will. I will do some measurements to see how well it stops- although i cant really guarntee accuraccy. I am also going to swap in the most exensive/best brake fluid i can find and see what that does- maybe even find some crazy way of cooling it Then i'll probobly just do the LS1 brake upgrade and get some Hawk Pads. Thats probobly the best bang for the buck (well, the majority of you guys already have the "LS1 brake upgrade."

With the above said, a set of high quality "solid" vented (99% are now a days) rotors would probobly suit you best for your application. Who makes them or what they cost is beyond me. I was just doing some late night LS1 reading tonight and stumbled across this. I would't worry too much though about the car, warped rotors are pretty common on LS1's. Hell a drive through a puddle/car wash after a long drive can do it.

Mark please dont (and I hope you didn't) take this as an attack on you or your buisness, merchandise or expertise. I was really hesitant to type all of this seeing how you are a new supporter of this website. I am really all for supporters of this site and encourage/suggest to member to buy from here whenever possible.

here is another thread about rotors that I wrote a few days ago, cant remember if its relavent or not... i think its mainly just production methods.

http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...r&pagenumber=2

Anyway, its amost midnight, i'm tired and its raining so I think I am going for a jog. I've been staring at rotor blueprints and talking about them too much. I think its bordering unhealthy at this point
please pardon my terrible spelling and -i'm sure- numerious typos.



EDIT:
I think its only appropriate to mention i just finished my freshman year so take it all with a grain of salt. May be some bad info- especaily in my "guesswork" section

 

Yep our stock rotors are crap mine were ruined by 22k.
If you're looking for some cheap cross drilled/slotted rotors JC Whitney sells Rototech front rotors for about $60 per rotor.

I've got 'em and they work fine/ no warping (except for the fact that the freakin Autozone pads I got squeak, I need to get ceramic pads).

I think I still have a discount code somewhere for an additional 10% off your order, email me and I'll give you the code.

 

GeekSS, bet you never thought your fairly simple question would get so many responses, including a tutorial on applied thermal dynamics. Trey is pretty much on the money here. The biggest impact of drilled or slotted rotors on a street car is visual appearrance. Slotted rotors will help clean debris from the pads. I mentioned above that I had the SSBC kit on my 97. What I did not say was that the car was shown several times a year.and that had a bigger impact on my choice of rotors than function. The 02 is also shown and that is why I will be going with slotted when it needs brake work. The car was the 2002 Modified Class Winner at this years WCA Winter Nationals. Yes it is in the new magazine at the top of page 19. So, you are armed with all of this information, do what your wallet can afford.

Trey if I can get this to work, you will have an email, may have some ideas for you.

 

treyZ28, thanks for the great post!

Both Larry at Carbotech (race pad manufacturer) and Lou Gigliotti (Pro race driver) have told me that modern pads do not outgas, and there is no need for an outlet for these gasses. Lou also went on to say that drilled/slotted rotors do nothing for cooling of brakes. He said the only time he used drilled rotors was in qualifying for the lighter rotating weight. He uses blank rotors, ie no slots or holes, in the race. Most road racers I know do the same.

As you stated, drilling and/or slotting reduces pad contact, which IMO is never a good thing. It is my opinion that drilled and slotted rotors are nothing more than "bling-bling", and serve little paractical purpose. That being said, since a set of drilled/slotted rotors came with my LG G-Stop brakes, I use them on the street. I swap to AutoZone C5 blanks when it comes time to go racing however.

For those wondering, check this photo of my AutoZone rotors after a weekend of road racing. If you got your stock rotors hot enough to turn them that color blue, do you think they would warp?

 

I am open to ideas-
At this point my goals are pretty simple. cool the damn rotor off as fast as possible. this isn't really a commercial thing but more of a "wouldnt it be cool if..." kind of deal

I'll probobly aim at cooling the inboard rotor more- i'm guessing the outboard already gets cooled a good deal by itself. plus its kind of hard to run a duct there.

Then again, the outboard probobly gets hotter and would benifit more from a "cooling system" (or else why would it be thicker )

I think i might go with some slotted rotors on my truck only because the sand from the sand dues ROCKED my rotors on my 03 truck (yeah, 8xxx miles at the time, 4500 coming from long distance vaccations!)
Maybe it will get some of that sand off

 

I would agree that slotted / drilled rotors are mainly for appearance. But that doesn't mean that can't also cause damage. Take a look at the picture of the cracks in the drilled rotor I linked to. That's why we only slot. Now I shouldn't say that slotting doesn't have it's drawbacks either, I just don't know what they are. I agree with what you said about the air moving from front to back across the rotor and the vents are what does the most cooling. And that's why in my mind slotting would do more for cooling than drilling. Slots are in the same plane that the air is moving, so it might help some with cooling, though I'm not qualified to say how much. But this also makes me think that drilling would do much less for cooling since the holes are perpendicular to the airflow. I mean, it's almost like the air would have to stop and make a right turn to go through the holes (kinda like the mystery lugi theory on that one episode of Seinfeld). We slot our rotors on CNC machines to keep them balanced. I'm not sure how other companies drill theirs. I do know that most everyone here has slotted rotors on their personal vehicles. And I'm not talking show cars (more like family sedans in some cases) so they must do some good - or we are so good we can sell ourselves anything!

But I digress... To me, I think slots look better than drilling. I guess that depends on the slots too. Some companies put straight line slots on their rotors, whereas we put curved slots that follow the shape of the rotor. I mean a rotor is round - why put a straight line in it?

I'm not going to sit here and plead with you guys to buy our product. You're going to buy what you want and can afford. But we do offer quality products, as PJS TOY can attest to. Let me know if there's any other info I can provide.

 

Mark,
As I said, I hope you dont take this as an attack on your buisness. This was not meant to be an attack on your product, its quality or value. Unfortunatly, from reading your last paragraph, you took it as one .


Just prior to reading this, I was discussing this whole thing with one of my (many) superiors. It again seems that slots give less surface area. Also, the rotor hat is acting as a giant heat sink so you really want the cooling on the inboard plate. that gets less air flow and doesn't have the hat to act as a heat sink.

I couldn't agree with you more about the air making a right hand turn so to speak. As simple physics/vectors will prove, air does NOT want to make perpandicular (sp?) turns. it has zero montuim in that direction so to speak.

What I would love to see is an end to guess work. I think that pretty soon- once i finish my cooling project (or start it) I am going to test the differance between slottled and blank. I think we are all in agreement that cross drilled is useless.

If someone can get my the specs on a cross drilled an LS1/LT1 rotor (diamter, hat height, brake plate widths, number of drillings and size of drillings) I can use the softwear here at work to see the inertial differanes as well.

I would also need stock specs too obviously. Mark, I can also do this for your slotted rotor if you want. Just private message me .

 

TreyZ28,

I did not take your original post as an attack. I'm sorry you took my response as such. I was just trying to state that with such a wide range of opinons out there that you are never going to satisfy everybody. And that being said, I was not going to try. No hard feelings

 

slots all over the non frictional area might be kinda cool though
(no pun intended )
Cool and look good.

BTW-
I dont see how curved slots are any better than strait ones. Is it maybe to clear off debris better?

 

I was just saying that curved slots look better than straight slots IMO.

I forgot to mention that slots do help in keeping the pad clean and thus helps prevent gouging the rotor.

I just replaced my blank rotors with our slotted rotors and the braking is much better. I'm not sure about the whole reduced surface area. If you have gases building up between the pad and rotor, that's going to cause the pad to push away from the rotor, decreasing braking performance. The slots help this gas escape.

 

I'll give you two for looks!

Are you running these on newer cars? Are you using extremely cheap or organic pads? If not- you shouldn't have any gas output from the pads. 95% of pads today dont put out any gasses. there are some studies and small movements for orgainic pads which are more green friendly, but I just cant see people paying more for less braking power to reduce "brake dust in the atmosphere" which is not exactly at the top of the enviromentalist's "to do list"

 

GeekSS, hope you have your answer because we are officially jacking your thread.

Here is what I sent Trey about air flow in and around the discs so that we can all be on the same page:

"Anyway, good analysis on the rotor deal. So here is the way that they appear to work to me. The vents that you refer to are actually the tips of what could be called a centrifugal fan blades. As the rotor turns, air is thrown out by the blades. The air is replaced inside the rotor through the opening around the center of the inner rotor disc. The flow cools the rotor from the inside. When the car is in motion, the factory air dam directs air up to the radiator. However, it is not as low at each end. This causes the over flow of air to be directed to the inside of each front rotor assembly for cooling. Now, with all of that said, I think that the trick will be to direct/trap more of this air flow to the rotor/wheel well area. If they have another NASCAR short track race this year, they always do a story on brake cooling. They show the rotor glowing and then cooling down repeatedly. they also explain all of the ductwork involved and how it is positioned. that seems to be a good place to start. If you can figure out how to direct that air to the front and rear discs in greater volume than it is, you have a winner. Your method will have to be a clean looking install without allot of bulk, It must be street/DOT legal to do and above all must be an improvement. The front could be as simple as the correct shaped piece of sheet metal attached to the lower control arm. The rear will be tricky because the emergency brake occupies allot of that inside opening- maybe an impossible task.

Well, that is all I can think of. Good luck in your endeavors."

So, to me it appears that on discs with vents, the the centers are actually where cooling occurs. On the C4 rotors there are right and left rotors because the vents/fan blades are curved for maximum flow effect. The blades on ours are straight so they do not flow as well but can be used on either side. This is where the curved slots start to take on importance. They still mostly a visual thing on most street cars. They do a great job of clearing debris from the pads. As i mentioned above, after all that mileage, the rotors still looked almost new. I still have them in my garage, in the original boxe. Thanks Mark, for such a quality product. The shape and direction of that curve determines where the debris/dust goes. Put them on so at the top of the rotor, the curve leaves the center and curves upward toward the front and debris is deposited in the center of the hub assy. In the other direction, it is deposited on the inside of the wheel. The direction of the slot during rotation makes no difference to braking per Marks guys when I installed them. So, that is all slots really do, most street/DOT legal pads either do not gas at all or very little. We drilled dics back on the Gen 1 Tran Am series cars because the disc was solid and pretty thick compared to todays with vents. It helped get rid of the gas but did not seem useful for cooling. We had also never even thought of the technology available today to do such complex tasks. Anyway, slots look cool on the street, have value in keeping your pads clean, seemed to increase stopping power for me(any new brakes might have given me that feeling over the worn ones I took off-sorry Mark), and are probably as necessary on the street as the French are in a fight. Increased cooling will only come from increased air flow, ia and around the rotor. Note that the C4 corvettes also had wheels that pulled air from the outside and directed it over the outer surface of the disc. Sometimes, a better look is not a better thing overall. Well, that is all I have to say about brakes. It is only my opinion, observation, and experience, it is not necessarily the only view. There are folks around who do this for a living, Trey is around some of them now. Just try to remeber that manufacturing anything on a large scale requires some trade off in quality and actual effeciency of the finished product. That is why the after market guys like Mark can make a living. They make one specific thing and they make it well.

Just previewed this monstor, it is long and I spell checked the email last night but this is going as is, I got stuff to do(life).

Seeya,

PJ

 

I got that email last night too

I agree with pretty much all of it. I think that something cooling the inboard brake plate would be far more effective than outboard. Like I said earlier, that hat will act as a gaint heat sink, but the inboard brake plate doesn't have this luxery.
This is where a good air duct will come in handy. Although my results will not really be anything that accurate, i could do a few 45-0 stops and measure the distance or something.

A lot of this stuff can be in your head as well. I got these new xxxxx and my car xxxxxxs much better. When in reality, if this change had been made without you knowing, you wouldn't have even noticed