Drilled, Slotted & Vented Brake Rotors - What's Best?

hello everyone and welcome in this video we're going to be talking about performance rotors drilled vented and slotted and why you may or may not want each of these individual features and a shout-out to carpark Kings for sending the brake rotors to use in this video you can check out the video description for relevant links diving right in starting with vented disc brakes this is very commonly used on the front brakes for cars and so basically what the purpose of this is is to allow for better cooling so you've got your two plates and then there's an air gap between them to help evacuate that heat and sometimes you'll actually notice they've got curved vanes and so this kind of turns it into a small pump and so it basically pumps the air out and helps to evacuate that heat and allow for better cooling and longer-lasting rotors that don't fade as you get into higher temperatures okay moving on to drilled rotors and this is where you simply just drill through it so you've got some little air holes in it and this is something that used to be a little bit more useful in these days it isn't really anymore but basically you have bonding agents in the pad that breaks down at high heat especially true for older pads or they use different materials modern ones aren't quite as bad and so this these bonding agents as they break down it creates this layer of gas and so that layer of gas prevents your pad from touching the rotor because of that pressure in between so these holes allow for that gas to travel out as well as any particulate debris from the pads themselves or water if you get any water or steam on it helps that evacuate through these holes now the bonding agents these days are much better so you don't really have that gas gap in there and so there's some there's some disadvantages of this as well so you may think oh it's got all these air holes that's going to be better for cooling well the other thing you need to think about is you have a reduced surface area and you have less mass to reject heat into so it's not necessarily a beneficial trade off also these holes become stress points during wide range heat cycles and this can lead to cracking so because you know if you're going really fast into a corner you slam on the brakes and then you accelerate up to a high speed again these are going to go through a very large temperature change and so these holes are going to be cooler than the areas around them and so you're going to have these large temperature differentials throughout the break and what that's going to do start to cause the rotor to fail and you'll have cracks in there because of the stresses associated with it so honestly on racing these really aren't used you know they're they're just not that their advantages don't pay off for their disadvantages because they can't fail and have cracking due to the stresses in the holes so not ideal for racing too weak and also as I mentioned previously the new pad compounds have improved and so you don't really have this gas layer between the pad and the rotor like you used to so why do you see drilled rotors on like AMG cars on Ferraris on high-end street based cars well because it looks awesome and it does look awesome but honestly that's pretty much it and you know the other thing is they can be built strong enough for street applications so it's not necessarily an advantage to use them but they look cool and they can be built strong enough to last if you're gonna do it yourself I wouldn't recommend using drilled but nonetheless yeah they're used on on performance cars because it makes them look pretty awesome moving on to slotted and these are basically the same purpose as drilled you're giving that debris somewhere to evacuate or those gases and it also can help wipe that pad clean through each rotation and it can also provide an additional biting surface that leading-edge and that unfortunately can lead of course to increased pad wear but these are actually used in racing unlike drilled and so it can add some benefits so in professional racing applications what will you see will pretty much always see vented you may see slotted and you'll rarely if ever see drilled as it has the stress disadvantage I mentioned earlier now they'll also do other things to improve braking so you can change the diameter of the rotor make it larger but sometimes you're restricted by your wheel size so you can make it thicker like for example in rally racing they're restricted to 15 inch wheels so that really limits their brake rotor size so they make them wider and you got to make sure that those are well vented because you've got a large mass within that and then also brake ducts for cooling so if you can get air flow to the brakes that's you know significantly better way to cool them than some of the other methods out there and just as some examples the Subaru rally car that I checked out that one used slotted rotors and then the Nissan lmp1 car that I checked out that one just use plain vented rotors and so what is the best option well you pretty much vented is is a good bet to go with and then either plane on the exterior or slotted and you know you can probably stay away from drilled unless you just think it looks really cool and you don't really care about the fact that it's going to probably fail before these other two options so thank you for watching and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below

Channel: Engineering Explained

Views: 1,664,415

Rating: 4.8997397 out of 5

Keywords: drilled rotors, slotted rotors, drilled and slotted rotors, stoptech slotted rotors, stoptech rotors, vented brakes, vented rotors, drilled brakes, slotted brakes, brakes cost, brake replacement, brake cost, brake job, brake job cost, car brakes, disc brakes, brake, brake pads, brake kits, ceramic brake pads, brake shoes, brake repair, brake service, brembo brakes, brembo, stoptech, wilwood, akebono, change pads, how to change brakes, DIY

Id: 78wbht355R8

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2015