Slotted Rotors

[jaywashburn]

Hello,

have a '72 K10 burb with factory front disc brakes/rear drum set up.
Checking to see if anyone has gone with front slotted rotors & if so does it make that big of a difference from stock rotors.
The brakes seemed to have overheated on a recent mountain jaunt (possibly boiled the brake fluid) so I am going to replace pads/rotors. A friend told me I should "upgrade" to slotted rotors. LMC sells them for 200.00 a pair.
Just wondering if others have used these & if it is worth the added expense.
Thanks !

[michael bustamante]

subbing, i have the mcgaughys 6 lugger drilled, slotted, vented, polished up, super ooba dooba rotors but i havent got the truck roadworthy yet. wanna see if theyre worth the money i shelled out for em too

[4shongo]

I installed them on other vehicles and have noticed a slight improvement. I have some for the Burb but have not had time to install them yet. Going to wait for winter time and do a complete brake job front and rear. Let us know if you get them and how they worked out for you!!

[indymachinist]

Depends what kind if pads you are running. With modern pads these days slotted and drilled rotors are mostly just for show.

As a side note... drilled rotors that get beat on hard in high performance aplications often crack out from the drilled holes. Slotted rotors are less likely to do this as the slots do not go all the way through.

Edit: I always prefer a high quality blank rotor with no slots or holes.

[Advanced Design]

Aren't drilled or slotted rotors actually for racing applications to assist with removing outgassing from new pads under heavy use? Seems I read that somewhere....

[Juiced06GTO]

I do a bit of road racing in my GTO and have learned a ton about brakes. I run centric blanks on my car, no slots or drill holes. The most important thing is the pad and the fluid. Unless cast correctly aftermarket drilled rotors are not worth it and will crack once you put any type of heat into them. Slotted rotors will help with outgassing when pads get hot, but the chances that you have a big problem with that in a Suburban are probably low. If you bed the pads correctly you should be able to get them hot enough to not worry about outgassing during normal use. (outgassing is the bonding material in the pad getting hot and burning off and exposing the actual friction material, the theory is that the gases generated create voids between the rotor and pad when the brake is applied, you want to get them hot enough during bedding that most of the bonding material burns off anyhow)

I ran slotted rotors previously on my car that cost over $400 for the pair and a set of Hawk Street/Race pads. I destroyed them in two track days and boiled my brake fluid on the first day.

This year I made the switch to the blank centric rotors ($200 for the pair) and Hawk race pads ($260 for front pads) and upgraded to Motul RBF 600 brake fluid which has a dry boiling point over 600 degrees. I have three track days on them and they are all still going strong and this is stopping a 4klb car from speeds in excess of 120-130 mph in some cases for 4 20-25 minute sessions per day. According to my temp gun they were about 875 degrees coming off the track. If the blank rotors can handle that I am sure they will handle stopping the Burb in most situations.