How do I reduce breaking fade-away under high speed breaking?

Question

I've heard that slotted break rotors are good, but not cross drilled, unless of corse I'm driving a ferrari. Any suggestions?

I'm not having any major problems, I drive an 06 pontiac grand prix with anit lock breaks and I noticed, while at high speed needing to slow down quickly, that I had some fade-away. It was subtle, but if I needed to stop any faster I'd want to know that I can come to a stop a little easier. My car uses forced induction and is by nature a fast car, I've often heard that breaking is very important for a fast car. Thanks for the advice.

I'm not having any major problems, I drive an 06 pontiac grand prix with anit lock breaks and I noticed, while at high speed needing to slow down quickly, that I had some fade-away. It was subtle, but if I needed to stop any faster I'd want to know that I can come to a stop a little easier. My car uses forced induction and is by nature a fast car, I've often heard that breaking is very important for a fast car. Thanks for the advice, Paul S.

Answer 1

slotted and crossdrilled rotors both cut down on brake fade. they are basically the same, the reason people chose slotted instead of crossdrilled, is because cd, have a tendency to loose strength and crack. other then that, crossdrilled just looks so much better.
the main cause of brake fading is a a layer of super heated gas that gets between the pads and the rotors. With slotted and crossdrilled rotors, you give the ability of the rotor to disperse the gases.
organic brake pads are better to reduce heat then semi metalic pads, because of the ..'glue' (im sure theres a better term out there), that holds the materials of the pads together. They have a higher melting point, so they dont create the gas pocket.
And what the previous poster said about brake fluid was also correct.
it doesnt really matter what kind of car you drive, from your $2 million dollar supercar, to your $2000 dollar daily driver, cheap pads and rotors that have no way to disepate the heat and gases are going to perform poorly.

Answer 2

Under what conditions are you having brake fade? And what kind of car? What the best course is will depend alot on that, what you expect in terms of braking, and what your budget is.

The first, and easiest place you might look would be at the Brake Fluid you are using. Flush the system and refill with something like ATE Blue or Motul. Second, look at the pad material you are using and get into a performance brake pad (careful not to get too aggressive though if this is for a car you drive on the street as many of the race pads are not very effective until they are warmed up and may never really get warmed up during street driving).

Next, there may be some simple things you can do for brake cooling - if you have backing plates around the discs to cut down on dust, you may want to remove these (yes, things will get dirtier with brake dust, but you'll get alot more cooling across the rotors). There are also some duct kits available for many cars to force more airflow over the rotors.

But, if you are having major problems now, under conditions that probably shouldn't be causing fade, you are most likely going to need an upgrade. Ultimately, brakes are like a giant heat sink, and once they start passing too much of that heat into the fluid, you will get brake fade (thus the earlier recommendation to look at fluid and pads that handle heat better). In the end though, you may simply need bigger rotors. Slotted rotors will help gasses disperse under braking (as well cross drilled), but I don't know if you are going to make massive gains here in terms of cutting down temperature. The real route to cutting down temp is bigger brakes.

Though, as a matter of course, I'd probably go with slotted rotors if I were replacing the brake rotors since cross drilled can be prone to cracking.