Hi All,
the brakepad warning light is flashing on/off now. don't think I can delay the brake work much longer. Found a set of Brembo cross drilled rotors for ~ $180 and the EBC Green Stuff is about $70. Anybody know of a cheaper place to get the cross drilled rotors? TIA!

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00 w210t, all stock.

I dunno about cheaper, but i know you can get OEM or OE Rotors for a good price in the parts shop here. hehe

If you find a great price let us all know, I'd like to look into upgrading my brakes, but I figure I'll just go with new rotors and pads, and some steel braided hose to help stiffen them up a bit.

Alon

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'92 300CE - Sold
2004 C240 - 744 - C7 Wheels - Android Radio
2002 C320 - 816 - Sport Wagon

EBC has turbo grooved rotors for $250ish, KVR performance sells Brembo rotors for a hefty $220, found a place for 'KPR' rotors for the $130 but the online shop doesn't seem to be reputable. The cheapest place where I found EBC brake pads is http://www.brakeco.com at $79.99 + $6 shipping. Will be ordering the Brembo cross drilled rotors @ $180 this week. As soon as I bed the pads in, will let everyone know how the combo works. For SS lines, go w/ goodridge, the price is very reasonable and you don't need to go thru Benzo-specific shops to get 'em.

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00 w210t, all stock.

I've had this on my mind for many years, "Crossed Grooved DYI Rotors." Considering the minimum rotor thickness as the depth from the surface of a new rotor and the small radius where the grooves are ground with the small amount of material being removed; get your handy dandy Dremmel Grinder with Carbarundum Disks and Do It Yourself. Consider the cost of OEM vz Cross Grooved Rotors. I'm just on my second set of rotors in 168,000 miles. Next time around I'm going to give it a try. Happy Trails Beep Beep from Houston!!!

Donald L. Swinford
Retires G.M. 20+yrs G.M. Engnrg Deptt.
1987 300E
168,8-- miles

Cross-drilled rotors are not for cooling. they eliminate a condition found in racing and other high performance driving (such as any time your kid drives the car) known as "gassing" when the surfaces reach their maximum temperature, gas is built up between the pad and rotor and this gas actually hold the pad away from the rotor. Unless you are on a circuit, it is hard to abuse brakes to the point where this happens. Without a doubt, drilled rotors do not provide any cooling to the rotor whatsoever. Many people debate this, But I have been racing motorcycles for 21 years and we have done many experiments in this area.

Granted, I haven't been racing motorcycles for 20 yrs. however, can you explain the usage of cross drilled rotors on current MBZ S-class and across the Porsche lines?

I'm going to mount my racetechnologies.com cadmium plated Brembo cross drilled rotors in 1 hour. Racing or not, I know they'll be a improvement over my worn OEM setup. YMMV

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00 w210t, all stock.

1)They look as cool as can be.

2)They do eliminate gassing, so they will not fade when they get super-duper hot. If you are the king of person who cannot touch your front wheels after you drive, you will benefit from drilled rotors.

3) They sell. They are a racing part for a street car. People always love that. Wings don't work under 90mph, but people people buy them and swear they work. The look of a 6 piston caliper, a thin spoke wheel, kind of needs a drilled rotor to look good. That is why they do it. The performance difference is nill unless you abuse your brakes similar to a racing. They are mostly for aestetics in DOT vehicles.

Cross drilled rotors was first used on rally cars. They did that to reduce weight. But they also found out that they reduced braking power (because you are reducing swept area). To compensate the reduced braking the rotor has to be larger, hence big cross drilled rotors. Drilled rotor has a couple of benefits for racing: it allows gas and/or water to escape; and it provides more surface area for heat transfer. But the rotor size must be increased to make up for the lost swept area.

Porsche and Mercedes use cross drilled rotors because of marketing and because they do provide superior braking when sized correctly.

I have used the cross-drilled rotors for about 200k miles on a 190e. Recently I switched to the ATE power slot rotors and ebc green pads. The biggest improvment I noticed with cross drilled rotors was that the braking felt really secure when the weather as inclement ie raining. The EBC green pads squeel at bit for a couple of hundred miles.

I have noticed that Semi-Metallic brake pads are all that is available in most shops. When I first got these brake pads back in 1987 for my Yamaha FZ-750, they squealed so bad I had to take them off. When I put the pads on without the little metal dust mixed in, the squeal went away. I found that anything other than a new pad and a new rotor will have enough play in the assembly to vibrate at a high pitch (that is the squeal sound). I have seen felt pads that were supposed to fix squealing situations, But I have never seen or heard of a real fix. Has anyone seen non-metalic pads in a while? I am brand new to Mercedes technology. I Have had a junk mercedes for about 2 weeks. It was love at first sight, It will be a concourse car when I am through with it.

I called my engineer friend at Eaton. He said that the holes do promote cooling, but in a marginal way. He said that the material required to allow drilling so many holes is what makes the difference. He didn't know what material that they mostly use, But that it is probably a ductile steel, which is very strong and resist warping and bending. He said the big improvement in passenger cars is the reduction of rotating mass. Since the disc weighs less, it takes less energy to stop it. Since your calipers are the same, they will do a better job with a lighter disc. He said that often they are designed to be much larger for the same weight. He recommended that you get a bigger disc and not one that is the same size but lighter.

I hope this helps

Steve Wyatt
510-522-7551
311 Maitland Dr
Alameda, Ca.

Didn't really need an 'engineer' to tell us what we already know: cross-drilled rotors do help improve brake performance - even if only marginally. While it's easy to say: "hey, Tony, if you want cross-drilled rotors, you need to get a bigger rotor to compensate for the missing surface area", it's much harder to accomplish.

After ~ 5 days, I can say this: the EBC (http://www.ebc-brakes.com) brake pads do not seem to increase braking performance over oem pads but they dust a LOT less. They have not squealed what-so-ever after ~ 600 miles of stop/n/go Los Angeles traffic. For a pictorial: http://www.tsj-freight.com/jpg/thchen/cars/300ce/brakejob

I purchased the EBC pads from http://www.brakeco.com, the cross drilled rotors from: http://www.racetechnologies.com YMMV!!!

[Edited by TonyC on 12-21-2000 at 02:32 AM]

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00 w210t, all stock.