Holy crap! that's astounding. :shok: On the other hand that's a really neat pattern... kind of like designer rotors
Ken thats great info on the Hawks. Especially vis-a-vis the EBC's. You know your stuff and thats good info for a lot of guys that just want to step up a notch without spending their ass on those expensive factory pads. I wouldn't worry so much about aftermarket rotors. Iron is iron and the only way you are really going to harden it is to cryo the stuff. If you don't use rotors that often, maybe thats worth while but a) changing rotors is easy b) factory rotors are dirt cheap. c) the non-directional vanes don't amount to a hill of beans. I've cracked those too. Cryo'd even. They were two-piece and had less iron to sink heat into. I went from fancy 2-piece rotors to the stock SRT rotors and the stockers are better. I buy mine for about $70 each and pay around $25 shipping. I'm not sure what the rules are for talking about non supporting vendors so pm me for where I'm getting them if you are interested. The only thing I don't like about the factory rotors is the slotting, which increases my pad wear and gives back a teeny improvement in performance that I'd rather do without in favor of pad life. And ... I changed those before they cracked all the way. I've got one where I pushed it too far. That was ugleeee. I probably could have gotten one more day out of them, but with the low cost of rotors, and what a cracked rotor does to a pad... ain't worth it.
Cyro is a waste of time & money. The cyro process only treats the outside surface and does nothing to the whole or center of the material. I'm trying a thermal process my guy is using. MoneyPit are your aftermarket rotors without slots? Can use send me one of your old - worn - junk rotor. Warren (The Brake Man) and I would interested in looking at the casting construction. For a better braking system why are you not using a StopTech System
Yeah, while cryo'ing made a definite difference, it still didn't stop the problem and since rotors are cheap anyway it just didn't make any sense to mess with. All of my rotors are good old Mopar SRT rotors. So they all have slots, unfortunately. If you want one I can get it to you, no problem. You want one thats cracked all the way thru or one like in the picture? PM me an address. My back caliper is a 4-pot Wilwood Forged Superlite. I'm using Wilwood because of the value proposition they provide. Brembo Grand Turismo's are pushing up in the direction if $7000 for all four wheels. A set of Stoptechs will run almost $6000 for all four corners. Contrast that with a Wilwood setup: Just under $4000. BUT there's no reason to upgrade the rotors (unless you like paying $400 instead of $175 every time you have to replace a pair). Buy Wilwood caliper kits ala carte and you are looking at about $2600 bucks. If you do the BSL6 in front you're down to $2400 but I wouldn't go there. If I back out the cost of the rotors and hats from a Stoptech kit, that works out to about $2100 off and the Stoptech setup is now about $3800 bucks. I'm sure the StopTech products are excellent. But the Wilwood stuff is a hell of a lot less expensive and based on the kind of torture testing I have put them thru, I'd say they are perfectly good at that lower price point.
I will be trying a complete Themal Process (takes nearly 100 hrs.) on the factory rotors and pre cured pads that The Brake Man has been using on the Ventura Fire Department F-550. They are seeing up to 5 times more rotor life than before and also an overall braking performance by 30%. What I have notice about The Brake Man (#93) Pads that I am using now is that how much more linear these pads are. The car stops without that heavy nose dive or tip in that other aggressive pads have. They are rotor friendy and priced reasonally. Racers net for the fronts are (I think) $78.05 for the fronts & $56.93 for the rears.
Yeah that thermal process sounds really interesting. I know of someone else - a vendor on another forum - who did what sounds like the same process but they kept the results completely under wraps. Whats the cost to have that done? Those pads *are* cheap. I'm paying $200 for the fronts and IIRC $180 for the rears. Porterfield actually made them for me, although they do that all the time and the FSL rear caliper uses a pretty common 4 3/4" stock car pad.
The Thermal Process is about $300. for a set of rotors treated. The process is prorietary, but, the test results from the Ventura Fire Department is available. This process will not help you because of the cinderblock pads (aka Rotor Rippers) that you are using that high fiction rate is not rotor friendly. Your paying $380. for a set of pads? I can check to see if that have them for your set up. Your rears should not be a problem, the fronts will have to be ordered. Your front caliper is raduial mounted? Earlier this year Warren was at Buttonwillow & a couple of Vipers had problems with that setup, breaking the mounts and ripping the caliper off. I think you said also some Porsches had the same problem. What you really should see and try if The Brake Man's F5 Caliper (1 7/8" pistons with a Nascar like Pad) DadsSRT would be a good canidate for the SuperBrake Rotor & Pads setup, since he runs his car on the street & NASA events.
$380 for all four corners. The rear set lasts quite a while. Maybe a year. I put them on last year and they are still fine. I will probably pop in a spacer this weekend in prep for Laguna just to be anal. The fronts have proven good for four days. Maybe five. They would be good for more if I wasn't picky about never having to worry about changing them midday. I could have gone five or six if I was willing to watch them go down or change them midday. Now that I am in the upper run groups I don't have to sit thru download sessions so I have more time to mess around. Plus the W6A's are supposed to yield a 20% pad life increase so we'll see. One thing: The W6A's are going to be much easier to change because their two bridge bolts are a lot easier to remove. Just a compression clip and it pops out. Probably saves 10 minutes right there. Yeah the rears are a 4 3/4" stock car pad with no bridge bolt fitting. Should be very common. Porterfield had to cut off the BB fitting from the first set they made me. EDIT: Yeah its radially mounted. Never seen any problems on Porsches. Never had any on mine. EDITEDIT: OMFG that F5 had better be one hell of a caliper for the prices that are posted. Is that *each* or is that per pair? God almighty talk about sticker shock... But I can see by looking at it that its well made. Still, at those prices I don't want to stop the car that bad.
