SCAutos.net

On my Celica I had just the OEM Toyota pads. They actually worked fairly well when I took it to the autox, so I never tried anything else. On the FD I wore out whatever pads were on it and then switched to slotted/drilled rotors and Axxis Ultimate pads. I like these pads, but the initial bite isn't as strong as I'd like it to be and they'll fade after a little while also.

On my next brake pad change, I think I'm going to try out either the Ferodo DS2500's or the Porterfield R4-S's and maybe change the brake fluid to something with a higher boiling point, like Motorcraft (550 degrees).

I have used a good number of pads. Firstly, the drilled and slotted thing in my mind is only for looks, if it really did anything racecars would do it. When you look at the physics of it there are no major upsides either. As far as pads, I have had many sets of your basic Duralast pads and have really good results. Only when hauling down Caesars head have I had a problem with overheating. Other than that they have performed perfectly. I have also had Hawk HP+'s, but I didn't like them in the civic because they overheated surprisingly easy and I have also been in a friends miata with them, and they overheated pretty easy during just spirited driving. I have had Carbotech's AX6 (panther plus) as well and those were awesome. I never had overheating problems with them even when trying to heat them up on a downhill. Only thing was unless they were hot they had a lot of brake dust.

So basically for me I will run the Duralast pads for everything except a track car and then I'll only run carbotech's. Oh and I only run Motul 600 for fluid. Other then that I just see pads as for bragging rights.

As far as slotted/drilled rotors, for me there are a few reasons to run them over regular rotors.

1. Having slotted/drilled rotors at every corner helps with the amount of unsprung weight your car is carrying around. While it may not help your acceleration times very much, it WILL help with your cornering ability and traction issues that you may be experiencing.

2. Slots in the rotors help to keep the face of the pad clean from any debris that may get burned onto it. By doing so, you're keeping your pad level and making sure that the maximum amount of pad surface is making contact with the rotor.

3. While slotted/drilled rotors do decrease the overall mass of the rotor, which makes the rotor heat up more quickly, that same decrease in mass will also allow for the rotor to cool more quickly. This comes in handy for SCCA racers who deal with tracks that are MUCH tighter and see a LOT more breaking than NASA, NASCAR, etc. etc. There may also be some ruling restrictions that require the use of blank rotors, but I'm not sure, I haven't done any research on that. Also, rotors tend to store the majority of the heat in the middle of the rotor. By putting holes in the middle of it, you're opening up a bit more surface area to help with cooling.

4. Slotted/drilled rotors, help in wet conditions by carrying water away and out of the rotor. Water getting trapped between the brake pad and the blank rotor has no wear to go, which can really hurt your braking ability. By having slots/holes, the water has somewhere to go. Granted, you're probably not going to see these sort of conditions on a racetrack where rotors and pads stay hot, but for someone who daily drives their sports car it's an added bonus.

My last reason is that I just like the way they look, lol. I've read that drilled rotors can lead to cracking, but I haven't had any cracks on my rotors yet, so who knows. I'm going with the Motorcraft brake fluid simply because I can get 3 containers of it for $15 whereas just anything else with the same rating costs $15 for only 2 containers.

If you like the look I say go for it. For me when it comes to cars I see things for their function not appearance, I am strange like that. I am also not saying that there is no truth in what you are saying, just that the effects are very small and a lot of the results can be achieved by other means.

I mainly just don't like how most people think they need huge brakes for their daily driven car because they don't have enough stopping power. If you can lock up the tires, then you have enough.

I usually stick cheap pads in my street vehicles, you pretty much never get close to the limits of ordinary semi-metallic pads in normal driving. I do put a decent pad in my Jeep (Performance Friction Z-rated) because it is pretty small in relation to the load I pull with it when I'm trailering other cars around.

For track use, I've vaporized ordinary parts store pads in my 280Z...literally, the pad material chunked off all at once. The Porterfield R4S - note, 'S' for Street - is a good, aggressive street pad that doesn't have much fade, but I've also destroyed a couple sets of these prematurely through track use on two different vehicles, Toyota MR2 and BMW 318. Where some pad materials fade (firm pedal but no stopping force) when they get hot, these simply keep stopping the car until the structural integrity of the pad material fails. I've since moved to the Porterfield R4 race compound with no issues in the MR2 or either of the BMWs I've driven on track, the E30 318 and 325. Hawk HT10 I have heard is comparable to the R4, and I think the Carbotech compounds are probably superior but I haven't needed anything better yet.

As for drilled/slotted rotors, in most cases you're probably asking for cracks or warps with these modifications. They were mostly introduced for old organic compound pads back in the day. These used to "outgas" when they got hot and needed the slot or hole to allow the gas to escape. Modern compounds don't do this and for the most part, slotted/drilled rotors are a liability. Case-in-point, a friend of mine has a 300+whp EP Civic hatch and he had a Wilwood big brake kit with drilled rotors...which cracked on him I think within about a year of him starting to do track days in the car. Switched to blanks and now he's back to just breaking the engine.

Remember that modern discs are internally vented and if you're in a situation where you're really generating more heat than the disc can reject (i.e. you're doing something other than just normal street driving), you should consider ducting air to the hub area to push more cool air through the center of the rotor.