SLotted rotors? Any good or costhmetic only?

[blu_fuz]

I am in 13'' Wilwood with slotted rotors.

In any test we compare with, more has to do with the amount of surface area that is between pads and rotor, not slotted/drilled or smooth. Your willies are 6 pot probably, my Baers 2 pot - almost insignificant but a little advantage to yours. I'm down for a side by side test absoloutly. I would love to see the comparison.

 

[Big Jim]

I'd be happy to sell you drilled rotors for track day use. The gains are huge!

Don't let these guys talk you out of what I know to be fact: your buying drilled rotors from me for racing will net a huge gain in my wallet. And I'm down for that.

With all due respect to Todd TCE and his fine products, I cannot suppress the urge to respond to his "toung in cheek" post.

And so the snake oil side of the story come out.

As I have so often said, snake oil products are very effective for what they are designed to do. What you must understand is that what they are really designed to do is to transfer money from your wallet to theirs. To do so, they must be very compelling. Voracity of the claims has nothing to do with it.

 

[Todd TCE]

My serious take remains this:

Slotting the rotor would in-and-of-itself aide in venting any boundary layer of material wear or gaseous particle build up, no matter how small and prevent that from becoming a buffer between the pad and rotor. This in turn will promote 'fresh' material be more in contact with the rotor than a plain finish. Scientific data to support that; no. Deduced from accelerated pad wear, and dusting; sure.

For the street and occasional track user I remain skeptical of it's true benefit. More hard core users running 1200f rotor temps and high zootin' pads looking for 1/100 of a second under extreme braking...I'd take all I could get. Back to back performance of a daily driver and general use conditions; you'll never know the difference.

That being said, most of the high zootin' track pads are also 'slotted'. I understand that this is as much for expansion issues as venting but the net result is the same.

I confess I poured over the ASE test paper on drilled rotors and was surprised to find the results were slightly in favor of them for higher temp stopping. To allow lower operating temperature was the reason. *been a while so I may not have all this correctly stated

The problem with that test was I don't believe they compared the use of a proper racing pad with the rotors which would have been happier at that temp. Nor did they compare this to a slotted only rotor I don't believe. I can buy that you may get a better result with base street pads and drilled rotors- running them cooler could well enhance life and bite. But why not just buy the right pad for the job?? *feel free to dig it all up etc and read it all to get it straight.

What was of no real surprise was that the conclusions came down pretty much to what we already knew; the minimal net gains were more than offset by the likelihood of shorter life span and premature cracking. I recall a Mazda team that reportedly ran nothing but drilled rotors on a ST kit. Never mind that they were replaced after each race....I'm sure it helped sell kits.

I sell slotted rotors simply because it's demanded by the market. I offer drilled rotors because I have to. I run them on my car also. But for weight savings only and on a car that is less than half the weight.

 

[SVTDEMON]

In any test we compare with, more has to do with the amount of surface area that is between pads and rotor, not slotted/drilled or smooth. Your willies are 6 pot probably, my Baers 2 pot - almost insignificant but a little advantage to yours. I'm down for a side by side test absoloutly. I would love to see the comparison.

Mine are 4pots,the way I look at it .It doesn't matter who will stop first as long as we have info we can share with future users.