As the title implies, is there a difference? There's a bit of difference in price for my application.
As the title implies, is there a difference? There's a bit of difference in price for my application.
YES AND NO. It really depends on what you want. If you're looking for OEM quality and durability/resistance to rust/warpage/cracking, then go for them. If you're going to throw on a set of hard pads and burn them up on the track buy cheap.
My $.02
Should've mentioned application. It's for my track car, I run race pads on it.
I almost always go super cheap with the car, but brakes I don't mess around with on any of my cars, much less the one I depend on to be fade free when I'm smashing the brakes while barreling towards a wall (I'm looking at you Sonoma).
lots of HC guys run cheap rotors and replace them every few events. i have run brembo blanks before and noticed a big difference, though i also changed pads at the same time
For the E46, Brembos wind up being on the cheaper end of the available pieces, ant about $60-65 each last time I bought some.
arent $11-15 Napa Blanks pretty popular with the Spec Miata crowd?
I have run Brembo in a kart and car/truck and prefer them. I usually have underpowered vehicles and good rotors and brakes make a difference. I also use Motul brake fluid.
If they're the same design...not really. Cheapo Chinese rotors will do the job just as well. Basically every car in my country that isn't on factory-equipped rotors is driving on them, including a lot of track cars.
Much like other common wear items, aren't they all more or less made in the same factories with different brand names slapped on the boxes as they head out the door?
I wouldn't be surprised if the same Chinese factory was making 9/10ths of them...but they're all simple hunks of cast metal, fairly hard to screw up.
turboswede wrote: Much like other common wear items, aren't they all more or less made in the same factories with different brand names slapped on the boxes as they head out the door?
not really … the quality of the casting differs greatly from place to place .. the brembo's that I get come in boxes with Italian writing all over them .. does that mean they're coming from Italy ?
I picked up some recently from tire rack, they were on sale and free shipping at the time so it wasn't any more expensive than the autozone jobber type and it is not cheap crap built in china.
New fluid, new tires, new wheels, new brake rotors/pads and the unicorn stops like a champ! the fitment on them was excellent and I haven't had a panic stop yet but bedding the pads yielded good results so far.
For my civic they're roughly twice the price for one brembo blank compared to the parts store no-names.
I warped Chinese rotors with ONE HARD STOP in my truck.
I use my Brembo blanks in my Mazda vey hard and yet they remain true as new with several thousand miles on them and several hard stops.
So as per usual we just have a ton of anecdotal evidence (going both directions) and not much else? :)
In reply to ebonyandivory:
No you don't. You have uneven material build up on the rotors due to poor brake pad bedding techniques or cheap pads.
accordionfolder wrote: So as per usual we just have a ton of anecdotal evidence (going both directions) and not much else? :)
I'm not sure what you were expecting. The only people with hard data would be professional racing teams or nearly so and they rarely use store bought brake components. OEMs test use brand new parts from their 3rd party vendors, which aren't likely the same as what we will see in the aftermarket. They aren't releasing that data either (at least not that I've seen).
The rest of us either go cheap or pay through the nose but can't afford the time and/or money to perform back to back testing.
If you want to know, go and order a set of Brembo-brand rotors and an off-brand set and see if there is a difference in their quality, etc.
I usually by A/C Delco rotors for my Speed6 on Rockauto.com.
They were 1/3 the price of the Brembo's and I haven't warped them. 3,600 lbs car with Hawk HP+ pads.
turboswede wrote: In reply to ebonyandivory: No you don't. You have uneven material build up on the rotors due to poor brake pad bedding techniques or cheap pads.
Undersized rotors will warp quickly. The old Elantra rotors were 9.9" rotors (with drum rears)and extremely thin (bulletin released warning to not turn them as there was 1mm in extra thickness between "new" and minimum) in a 2900 lb empty car. a couple of Interstate panic stops with a passenger of normal size would have the rotors so blue you'd swear they were painted. They were warped. I put multiple rotors on that car even after switching to HPS pads. It wasn't until I stepped up to the 11" Sonata rotors with Tib calipers that it stopped warping them and making pretty colors.
In reply to turboswede:
It was what I expected, but not what I was hoping for.
In reply to fornetti14:
Wow cheap, I actually hadn't checked there yet. 13+shipping per rotor.
Same results at fornetti14 on my side ... Centric rotors (also low cost) have been good to me also as another alternative.
fornetti14 wrote: I usually by A/C Delco rotors for my Speed6 on Rockauto.com. They were 1/3 the price of the Brembo's and I haven't warped them. 3,600 lbs car with Hawk HP+ pads.
einy wrote: Same results at fornetti14 on my side ... Centric rotors (also low cost) have been good to me also as another alternative.
Good info, that's the pads I run too (HP+). It's in an ~1800lb car though, so even on no name pads it stopped with a purpose, now that I'm running the HP+ and good race fluid I'm 99% sure I can endo (spl?) the thing (and do it lap after lap).
I've used Brembo blanks on several cars. Some have been great, a couple have warped, one cracked.
I've used cheap-o auto parts rotors. Some have been great, some have warped.
I've used Frozen Rotors. Same story.
At our last Chump race, we warped our new Frozen Rotors badly within 2 hours of start. Then we threw on our used (full race already on them) cheap Chinese rotors for the next 10 hours, with nary a shimmy or shake. Maybe we bedded them badly, IDK, I'm usually pretty good about bedding pads correctly.
YMMV. I personally don't believe they hype about the "name" rotors. I think there's a difference for rotors that are 2-piece or have better cooling vains, but even that I have no real proof of....
turboswede wrote: In reply to ebonyandivory: No you don't. You have uneven material build up on the rotors due to poor brake pad bedding techniques or cheap pads.
+1
You'll need to log in to post.
