1-Piece Brake Rotors

Slotted vs Drilled: Which brake discs should you choose?

Slotted

Slotted brake rotors offer a significant performance boost over a smooth brake rotors. Under heavy braking, pad wear and outgassing causes a layer of dust and gasses to build up between the pad and the rotor surface, dangerously decreasing friction and causing “brake fade.” Unlike a smooth rotor, the slotted rotor has channels, or “slots” as the name implies, machined into the friction surface of the rotor. These slots allow for gas and brake dust to escape, resulting in better contact between the pad and rotor. Also, as the microscopic debris and gases are vented away from the pad, they naturally follow the path of the slot across the surface of the rotor, spreading out the heat and reducing likelihood of warpage due to overheating. The slots can also provide more initial “bite” for your brake pad and increase braking effectiveness while maintaining a smooth and responsive pedal feel.

Drilled

Cross-drilled rotors are often used from the factory on high-end sports cars, which is why they look fast to many of us, even when installed on a parked car. Like slotted brake rotors, cross-drilled brake rotors provide an escape for the gas and dust that build up between the brake pad and rotor. But the holes in the face of a cross-drilled rotor also provide a direct cooling to the surface between the pad and rotor by directly linking it to the interior cooling vanes of the rotor, increasing surface area and lowering brake temperatures. Cross-drilled rotors can even increase initial brake bite in wet weather by allowing water to quickly escape the braking surface before it can affect initial braking. While it’s generally true that slotted rotors are often more durable under true race conditions, for the enthusiast with spirited driving in mind, drilled rotors offer not only better brake cooling and wet-weather performance but also a rotor that looks great behind your wheels.

Slotted & Drilled

Drilled and slotted brake rotors offer the best of both worlds: Great initial bite in wet and dry conditions, superior cooling capacity, decreased brake fade, longer life, and fantastic looks. This makes drilled and slotted rotors are the choice of many performance enthusiasts, but they also work great on your daily driver for the exact same reasons, and they’ll outlast any race-dedicated braking setup that is intended to be changed at frequent intervals with low mileage. But, for the average driver, you want to feel your brakes dig in right away, and stop as short as possible when the situation calls for it. But you also want faith in having more pedal travel than you need, while keeping your brakes as long as possible. For all these reasons there is nothing wrong with bringing a little race car technology to the street, even if you aren’t necessarily a race car driver.

Brakes-Shop carries some of the best brands in the business like StopTech, EBC and Hawk. Which ever you choose, you can be sure that you are getting proven, high quality components.