Scott at Team Harco

Danno touched on the metal matrix compounds. When I was at Teves, we were working on some light weight metal matrix drums (maybe drum-in-hat rotors too, if I recall) with significant aluminum content. I did not get any first hand experience with these components but they seem to work OK on mini vans and the like. I rather doubt they are ready for high performance applications.

As for full aluminum rotors - it's not going to work. Heat capacity of aluminum is not adequate for high performance braking. Your friend "steve" is either pulling your leg, or he just dumped a bunch of money on something tha tis not likely to work as well as a good iron rotor.

kennycoulter

im pretty sure ive seen rear brakes for hotrods made of aluminum.

Matt H

Scott are you not referring to composite rotors used on Chrysler minivans?
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

alengyel

Danno, I watched a guy take a cube of the aero gel, roll it into a ball in his hands and eat it. His point was its benign nature. I saw the Metal matrix aluminum rotors mentioned in Excellence a while back. It was an article on a 911 club racer that was down to like 1700LBS.

M758

yeah and do hot rods ever use the brakes for anything?

Drag cars have parachutes to slow down.

Scott at Team Harco

Yes - I believe that was the application we (Teves) had in mind for those parts. As I say, I did not work directly on that program - but I did have a personal interest in learning more about it.


Yeah - hot rods are not known for their braking performance. (What M758 said).

kennycoulter

sorry just letting people know that it has been done.

Matt H

I thought you might be referring to that. If they were anything like on a sports car they would be replaced frequently. Those rotors have an awful time with warping. So much so that they are generally not even turned, just replaced.

I figured as much because Teves makes the ABS setups for Chr. including the insane setup on the Cherokee that requires a scanner to bleed the brakes :>)
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

Scott at Team Harco

No sweat. There are applications for aluminum rotors. It's just that they are not used on vehicles that require performance braking.

A good example (other than bicycles and scooters) are rotors for sprint and midget racers. They are probably not all that popular - but they are available. These cars do almost no braking so they can get away with the reduced capacity. Aluminum hats are popular in short track circles (pun intended) and in some road race applications. However, the rotors themselves are either iron or carbon.

Peckster

I hope Cass944 fills us in on what these rotors were.

Cass944

sorry still waiting to go get pictures of them. man they were so freakin shiney. Ill ask the guy who made them exactlywhat he was thinking when he made them.

Geo

Are you sure the rotors weren't two piece floating rotors as used in race cars, i.e. aluminum hats with iron rotors?

Aluminum is entirely too soft for a brake rotor.

Danno

The other issue is one of strength. An aluminium rotor shaped just like a stock steel one would be only 1/3rd as strong. I guess you can make up for this with having a solid rotor, but you'd end up with not much of a weight savings. That's because the strength-to-weight ratio of aluminium and steel is roughly the same. To get the same strength out of alloy, you have to use 3x as much and make the part bigger. You'll noticed that fully optimized designs in both steel and aluminium, like bike-frames or cars end up at about the same weight.