本帖最後由 carwing 於 2010-6-12 06:20 AM 編輯
Most drivers know that they need to perform a little routine maintenance to keep their vehicle in good, working condition. That may involve regularly changing the engine oil, maintaining proper tire pressure and occasionally monitoring the levels of each of the vehicle's vital fluids. Some components and systems require a little more maintenance and others require a little less. In terms of your vehicle's braking system, if you regularly check the fluid and change your brake pads, you have nothing to worry about, right?
Well, not quite. You're forgetting about the rest of the brake parts, including your brake rotors. Brake rotors are an important component in the braking system that stops your vehicle. Brake rotors (they're also called brake discs) are what your vehicle's brake pads clamp down on to stop the wheels from spinning. Some people may be surprised to learn that the brake rotors are just as important to stopping their vehicle as the brake pads are. Like other brake parts, there are several different types of brake rotors available. We'll take a look at a variety of them throughout this article -- pointing out the strong points and drawbacks of each along the way. Keep reading to learn more about the many different types of brake rotors. You may even be able to determine which are best suited for your car or truck, and how you can maintain them.
There are two major types of high-performance brake rotors -- drilled and slotted. We'll discuss the drilled rotors here and move on to the slotted rotors on the next page. Drilled brake rotors, as the name implies, have holes drilled in them. Having a holes drilled into any of your brake parts may seem counterintuitive, especially the brake rotors -- after all, a rotor full of holes means that there's less surface area for the brake pads to grab and stop the car -- but there are a few reasons drilled rotors make sense.
The first is heat. When the brake pad grabs the rotor, it creates friction, which creates heat. If that heat can't escape, it leads to brake fade, which reduces the brakes' stopping power. The second reason is gas build up. This actually isn't much of a problem any more; however, the materials used in some older types of brake pads caused gas to build up between the rotors and pads. That gas also limited stopping power. The last reason is water. If a car drives through a puddle, a carwash or even a rainstorm, the brake rotors can get wet. A wet brake rotor is slippery and difficult for the brake pads to grab. Having drilled holes on a brake rotor makes it easy for heat, gas and water to be quickly moved away from the rotor surface, keeping the brake performance strong.
The downside of using drilled rotors on your vehicle is that all of those holes tend to weaken the rotors -- just like punching holes in the wall of a house would weaken the wall. After repeated stressful driving, the rotors can even crack.
But what if you're into driving performance? Are drilled rotors right for you, or should you consider another kind of brake part for your spirited driving? Keep reading to find out.
Slotted Brake Rotors
Slotted brake rotors use slots carved into the flat metal surface
to move gas, heat and water away from the surface of the rotors.
You can think of the slots as irrigation ditches that move the unwanted materials safely out of the way.
Slotted brake rotors are popular with performance car drivers because the type of driving they
do puts a lot of stress on the rotors. As we mentioned on the previous page, drilled rotors have been weakened, which makes them prone to cracking around the holes, particularly when they've been repeatedly driven hard. Because they tend to be a little more durable than the drilled brake rotors, slotted brake rotors may be a better brake part choice for some performance car drivers.
Of course, slotted brake rotors aren't perfect, either. They tend to wear down brake pads very quickly. Because of this, the most common type of performance brake rotors found on production performance cars are of the drilled variety. While that type of construction is seen as too weak for racing applications, most everyday drivers should have no trouble with drilled rotors on their street cars and can save the slotted rotors for cars that are racetrack-bound.
So how much different are car and truck brake parts -- particularly car and truck brake rotors -- from motorcycle brake rotors? Read the next page to find out. |
發表於 2010-6-12 06:16 AM
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