Why Use Drilled and Slotted Brake Rotors?

Here are some reasons why you should consider using slotted and drilled brake rotors for your car:

1. Enhanced Brake Grip

Slotted and drilled discs offer enhanced brake grip for more efficient brake performance. 

When you’re braking, the kinetic energy of your vehicle becomes heat because of all the friction between the pads and brake discs. As a result, repeated braking leads to higher temperature rises.

At elevated temperatures, the resins in your brake pad material can burn up, producing gasses that ultimately compromise your braking performance. Fortunately, the disc brakes’ drilled holes can quickly expel these offset gasses to restore braking grip rapidly.

2. Heavy-Duty Brake Support

Heavy-duty and high performance vehicles like trucks require extra braking support from performance brake rotors.

Why?

Heavy vehicles need more stopping power to slow down. Slotted and drilled discs have a comparatively lighter mass than blank rotors, which helps slightly reduce the vehicle’s inertia. That’s why drilled and slotted rotors are excellent at delivering that powerful yet smooth braking performance to bring your heavy-duty vehicle to a stop.

3. Wet Climate Suitability

When you’re driving in wet climates, the profile of your braking system changes.

Moisture between your brake pad surface and brake disc can reduce the amount of friction your braking system generates. This leads to lower stopping performance for your cars.

The drilled hole and slot pattern in your disc brake allows the moisture brake dust to escape. This keeps your disc brakes dry, helping you achieve consistent braking performance even in wet weather conditions.

4. Faster Cooling Rate

When braking, the point of contact between your brake pads and rotors heats up due to friction. Frequent heavy braking can lead to higher temperature build-up, which causes the pads to fade, crack, and develop other problems in the long run. 

Now, your car needs sufficient airflow to keep the brakes cool. But, standard rotors take longer to cool down compared to slotted and drilled rotors. Each drilled hole and slot on a slotted and cross drilled rotor increases the rotor’s surface area. This allows heat to dissipate faster, cooling down the brake system at a higher rate.

5. Slows Down Brake Pad Glazing

If you’re going down a hill or stuck in traffic you’ll likely apply brakes more frequently.

Doing so can increase the temperature of your brake system, causing your brake pad surface to smoothen and harden (known as glazing). Over time, the pads’ surface starts to mirror the disc brake, and they become incapable of generating sufficient friction.

Fortunately, in drilled and slotted brake rotors, the grooves on your rotor chip off the pad material to slow down glazing.

Before buying one of Brembo's products please check if it's compatible with your car. The holes on the braking surface are typical of Brembo's Xtra range discs. They improve the system's performance in terms of initial grip, pedal feeling, fade resistance and heat dissipation capacity.

The Xtra discs can provide design solutions that differ from those of the disc's original design according to the type of application they are used for (car model, maximum speed, weight and engine power). This in terms of material being used and of the holes' number, type and pattern on the braking surface.

In some cases, the “blind holes” solution (dimples) has been preferred in place of the pass-through holes, while in other cases a special material capable of improving the resistance to the thermomechanical stress the disc undergoes has been duly chosen.  

All this has been done not only to assure the product's highest performance but also to maintain the same safety features of the original disc.

It's thanks to these custom solutions per code and application and to the many tests carried out on the chassis dynamometers and on the road that all the Xtra range part numbers are ECE-R90 approved. 

This allows and assures a completely safe road use.