Re: Upgrading brake rotors

["Christian Sorensen" <sorensen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A set of rotors and TWO sets of pads in a month???

My first impression is that you are being too hard on your brakes, and that
you'd get much better life out of them if you practiced squeezing the brake
pedal on instead of slamming the door shut!  That said, I have no idea what
your track driving practices are and I suspect you're not likely to believe
me that these practices make a significant difference to brake rotor and pad
life.

My second impression is that you are using the wrong pads.  Street pads will
not hold up under any kind of serious track use, nor will those
'combination' track/street ones.   I myself went through a set of
Carbon/Kevlar dual use pads in one weekend at Mosport last year.  Of course,
everyone was quick to suggest I modify my driving style to take better care
of my brakes ...

I switched to using Performance Friction 90 track pads against my stock
rotors and noticed an immediate improvement in wear rate.  That said, they
do heat up tremendously and so require rigorously observing a cooling off
period after a track run to avoid warping the rotors.  Knowing this I
decided that a brake duct cooling system was in order, and found one from
bimmerworld (www.bimmerworld.com) early this year.

This duct setup is pretty slick and works as advertised.  The only problems
I have had are that I need to constantly monitor the condition of the hose
from the inner fender liner to the rotor as it is rubbed by the tires.  One
needs to avoid full-lock turns, especially with ultra-wide 245x40R17
Hoosiers under the front fenders!

I also upgraded my front brakes to the M3 setup, which requires rotors,
calipers, caliper brackets and front spindles for our 328 models. Now I have
great brakes and have never yet warped a rotor!

As far as cross-drilling and slotting are concerned, according to my those I
trust the PF 90 pads work best on solid rotors and will wear more quickly
otherwise.  The duct cooling should be more than sufficient to keep them
cool.  I will likely switch to the Euro M3 floating rotors should I  ever
wear my fronts out, though.


Chris (Wild Man) Sorensen
Team ActionFront Data Recovery Labs
1996 BMW 328is Solo1 racer (check out www.soloontario.com for a picture and
my 2000 results)

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