[ANTHONYD]

darkpuppet,Jun 21 2005, 01:42 PM Wrote:hmmm.. I had the KVR crossdrilled, two piece rotors as part of the python kit that was installed on my car.  The brakes were pretty good... after a few autocrosses, and the occasional abuse by myself, held up fine, but crossdrilled were harder on the pads, and made more noise with very little added performance over stock. 

However, a shitty install led to slight rotor warpage, so I recently had them replaced with just slotted rotors up front.

And the stuff ain't cheap, that's for sure.. I actually like the brake feel much better now with the slotted rotors and CF pads that I bedded in myself.... this is what aftermarket brakes should feel like!

that's my thoughts on the KVR stuff... let's be honest, for anything but track useage, the stock brakes are just dandy.  People complain about lifetime, etc, but they are equal wear parts, and the gain you get in performance is the loss you get in life expectancy.

Getting pads that dust, less, wear longer, etc, will alter the performance dynamics of the stock brakes.. not necessarily a bad thing, but not always a good thing.

So what do you do?  go aftermarket and pay twice as much for something that will last twice as long, or go half priced and get something that will last half as long.. in the long run, I honestly think the performance/price ratios end up being about the same.

on a side note, even Baer doesn't recommend their cross-drilled rotors for track use, merely for the stress risers that come from them.  of course they drill behind the vanes to reduce crack propogation (according to baer's site), but honestly, anyone who does cross drilled is looking for looks, not performance.

so the fact that they had someone cross-drilling the rotors manually doesn't surprise me... .all cross drilled rotors start off as regular blanks.  There's no way the drilling was done just willy-nilly either, since how could you expect a kid to miss the vanes when drilling holes?  There had to be a template.

So on that front, what's the point of slotted and/or cross drilled?  not much when you consider that new material pads don't gas up like older/cheaper pads that the brakes were designed for.. so if you spend money on decent pads, you don't need to bother with slotted OR cross drilled.  i went slotted because they're prettier than stock, but not as rice as cross-drilled.

just my .02 of course.
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I think the stock brakes on the Focus do just fine. It was one of things I liked about the car while test driving.