Screws holding rotors on--necessary?

Ian F wrote: I've had to drill out a few that have siezed on MINI's - which use an effing phillips screw (my VW at least has a torx). The last one even my hand impact driver wouldn't budge. As a last ditch attempt before drilling the mofo out (BTDT) I put my air impact gun on it using the bit driver from the hand impact - that got it out. Definitely slather the SOB with antisieze upon reinstallation. I need to keep new ones around just in case - especially for MINIs.

That's odd - given that MINIs are a BMW product, I would have expected them to be internal hex like BMWs are. I wonder if any of the BMW pieces would interchange so you could replace the phillips-head pieces with the more robust internal hex units.

oh, one other thing .... had to change rotors at the track last time ... and had forgotten to remove the screw the last time I changed rotors .... yeah it wouldn't move, I didn't have a impact screw driver with me, and I didn't have my screw extractor set ... no one around me did either ....

finally someone pointed out that the rotors coming off were shot ( way past turning ) so just take a hammer and whack the heck out of the rotor ( both sides ) .. pretty soon the screw had been vibrated so much that it came out ezy-pzy

I had one missing on my M3. After a few track events the holes for the wheel bolts started to Egg out despite the road wheel bolts holding torque. I recommend new ones with copper based anti-seize

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I like them - when you are swapping wheels or pads at the track in a hurry and everything is wicked hot it is nice not to have the rotor flopping around free. I get less burns.

I have seen them back out on people and cause a wobble or even cause lugs to come loose when the wheel won't seat right at the next swap so do snug them a little.

I put them back in but with a nice helping of anti seize, salt is hell on cars.

N Sperlo wrote:

Woody wrote: As an added bonus, they're easy to strip when you're trying to remove them.

How would that help remove a countersunk phillips head screw?? :-)

Well, brakes are (mostly done). Still have to bleed them. No problems with screws, but I did manage to shear one caliper bolt. And I still hate pistons that have to be rotated to retract.

z31maniac wrote:

Ranger50 wrote: I have heard reports they do dampen potential warp/shudder by holding the rotor steady against the hub.

I can't possibly imagine how that little bolt would do something if 4-5 large nuts/bolts torqued to 75+ isn't holding it steady against the hub.

^^this

I throw them away every time, personally.