I used to have a cross drilled Brembo package on a Mustang I used to own and could find no one locally in Jax, FL who would touch the rotors. I'm upgrading to sport brakes and trying to decide if I should get drilled/slotted or just go OEM. Do you guys have any trouble getting someone to turn them or do you just replace them? Where do you take yours?

 

can't turn slotted or drilled rotors

 

So is it safe to say I'd get a lot more life out of OEM since it can be turned or would the quality of a Stoptech rotor or something like that balance it out?

 

It really depends on your driving and how hard you're on the brakes. The drilled and slotted rotors are designed to help with overheating the rotors and to quickly dissipate the heat along with other features.

It really boils down to what kind of driving you will be doing, track, show, or daily driving.

 

Yeah, I drive like a granny...much like the upgrade itself, it would really be aesthetics only.

 

My recommendation, if you're upgrading brakes ditch the OEM Akebono's and look for aftermarket solutions. Drilled rotors help cool the rotors and makes warping less likely, they are more prone to cracking though if driven hard.

I've managed to warp every rotor I've owned, my current rotors are Stoptech Slotted. They've never seen a track and they're starting to warp.

 

Subscribed for more info.

 

Believe me, I'd love to but nothing comes close to Akebono's for the price. Dealer says a brake job on my non-sports will run about $342 PER AXLE , and that's just for turning the rotors. That's 50% of what it would cost to upgrade to Akebonos.

 

That's a MYTH I once use to believe as well. Reality is slotted/drilled rotors are purely for asethetics with today's pads. They actually deminish cooling and braking. With less surface area you have less friction for braking and less material for heat dissipation.. think heat sink. Don't get me wrong they're fine, I have them, just don't think they actually improve performance.

 

^What he said.

 

For daily driving, if you can stomp on the brakes and make ABS kick in, slotted/drilled rotors won't help in the least. The tires are almost certainly going to lose grip before the brakes. Now, in a heavy track session on a road coarse, I imagine you can make the brakes fade to the point that ABS no longer kicks in. Will drilled or slotted help there? Dunno. I haven't done the research. I do know that you will eat through pads faster, especially on slotted rotors where the slots are angled such that they line up parallel with the edge of the pad.

As far as turning rotors go, on my last two cars, you couldn't turn the rotors. The metal was soft enough that by the time you wore through a set of pads, you had worn enough of the rotor that no legitimate shop would turn them. Mind you that would have been BMW and Mercedes rotors. I don't know how the OEM Infiniti rotors will wear yet, but at under $100 per wheel for new OEM rotors, I'm not going to try and skimp.

 

Interesting...service guy at my Infiniti dealer told me today that the Gs go through the rear rotors twice as fast as the front. My car has 39K miles and he said the front looked fine but the rear measured at "4" (whatever that refers to) so that this time they could be turned but at "3" they would replace them, meaning, I'd get to turn the rears once at best anyway.

 

Slotted and or drilled rotors can be turned with the proper machine. I don't know if any shop in your area has one, they're not common.

 

It's not the machine -- it's the guy doing it. Most don't have the experience or patience to do it correctly, so they get horrible chatter. Take them to the old, grumpy machinist who understands metal and cutter vibration, not the 19-year-old kid at the tire store. You might pay $5 more for each one, but it is worth it.

 

OP: Unfortunately, there is a huge amount of misinformation in this thread. Nearly all the wives' tales have been presented, so we're just missing a couple more....

For the street, drilled, slotted, drilled AND slotted and (the best yet) J-Hook rotors will all provide better pad "bite" at speed than smooth, plain-faced rotors. Of course, braking is always limited by the tires (which is one of the reasons we buy the better performance tires), but have you ever tried engaging ABS at 80 or 90 mph? Exactly!

What we want here is the additional INITIAL bite that plain face rotors do not offer. The benefits are real and have been quantified on brake dynos and by professional drivers. Not all drivers are sensitive enough to notice, and some of them will claim that no one else can notice it either. I don't know about them, but even my wife can tell the difference in our minivan! <-- Yes, I put drilled rotors on a minivan! Call me crazy...

Testing has also shown that the cooling advantages are very small unless the rotors are operating at very high temperatures, not something you'll not likely encounter unless tracking the car or bombing canyons and/or mountain roads. Anyone selling you hard on that point has run out of other ideas.

Bottom line: They do work (if done properly, which eliminates about 85-90% of the rotors on the market), they can be turned and they also look pretty cool behind a nice set of wheels. Other than slightly faster pad wear, what's not to like?