Hi everyone, one of the last remaining puzzle pieces in my upcoming Fairlight Strael 4.0 is choosing a set of rotors. I bought the groupset secondhand and it did not come with any rotors. Some pieces of information/criteria to narrow the suggestion space:
I’ll go for 160mm disks front and rear
I’m running Shimano centerlock
I’m running Shimano grx 610 with the stock pads (for now at least)
I’ll be riding mostly in dry conditions (if that matters)
Are there any brands that make particularly good rotors, anything to look out for/avoid?
Any input is most welcome
EDIT: clarified that I currently don’t have any rotors, not that I’m insisting on replacing Shimano stock rotors
Nothing, I’ve just bought the group set secondhand and it did not come with rotors so I’ll need to buy some. Happy to buy Shimano, just wondering if there’s other brands that people might regard highly. Also from quick looking at the Shimano offerings there’s different levels, do those make a difference or is it all weight related?
They look pretty cool and apparently stop faster, but at double the cost.
Otherwise I’d just go for the Shimano, I usually just get the Ultegra tier - the Dura Ace have a black coating that mostly looks cool and may dissipate heat faster, and then there’s the 105 tier without the cooling fins. They should weigh mostly the same.
Having quickly read the article, I don’t think that’s strictly correct. I’d say for the same amount of lever pressure they generate more braking power. The reason that this difference matters is that in the case of a bike your braking is usually grip limited and not braking power limited. This means that you’ll lock up your tires long before the peak braking power becomes relevant. For someone who struggles (for whatever reason) to generate adequate pressure at the lever more braking power can definitely be relevant, but thankfully that’s not the case for me.
Plus as you said, the price tag is a bit of a turn off.
It is a very interesting approach though of making sure that the amount of material is consistent across the circumferences of the rotor to avoid hot spots. Seems like it makes sense intuitively.
I’m not going to claim they are objectively any better than far cheaper options, but I’ve got Hope RX rotors on one of my bikes, and I’m quite happy with them. Come in colour options if you want bling, or the black looks smart if you want something less ostentatious. Would suit a Fairlight, especially if it came with other Hope bits.
As well as the price of the rotors themselves, note that lockrings are not included.
I’d stick with Shimano rotors, Dura-Ace look nicer with the black and apparently can handle higher temperatures but the Ultegra are pretty close, still handle heat better than most, same weight, and cheaper. The last generation DA and Ultegra rotors have been quite beefed up as well, so they don’t deform as much when braking hard and they seem to stay true better than their past offerings.
As much as I liked SwissStop pads in the rim brake days, every bikes with their rotors I have seen in the flesh or tried had the rotors discolored from overheating, all using SwissStop pads, not saying it will always happen, but I personally wouldn’t get them. Sure these rotors were used mostly in the mountains of the Pyrénées, but I never had this issue with Shimano rotors and pads.
Shimano IceTech rotors do wear out faster though. Other rotors have a full steel brake track but IceTech rotors only have thinner layers of steel over an aluminum core, so you have much less steel to eat through before needing new rotors. That’s especially true if you live in mountains, ride rain or shine, off-road and use metal counpound pads.
I went from older (5+ years) to the newer and supposedly stiffer Shimano Ultegra rotors, and had much less of the temporary “ting” after a descent with a lot of braking. Haven’t tried any others.
I would like to understand how the rotor is manufactured to not squeal?
There so many external variables that can or will make brakes squeal or make noise.
I’m a skeptic on that statement.
Happy with my various levels of Shimanos, though on the lower tiers, say an RT64, the added weight comes from the absence of the inner alloy layer that the Ultegra/Dura Ace rotors have sandwiched between the outward facing stainless steel layers that Shimano calls Ice Tech Freeza. The rivets of the RT64 that fix the rotor to the center carrier also has a tendency to rust, but this is purely aesthetic and poses no functional challenges.
Another thing worth noting is the design of the braking surface itself. The cutouts are there for heat dissipation and aids friction, i.e. braking performance. The ones that are seemingly randomly spaced out are better for pad wear, as opposed to say, a rotor where the cutouts are evenly spaced (consistently) from each other, like in the image below. This causes a ridge to form on the pad itself, that corresponds to the central, uninterrupted line between both rows of cutouts. If that central line was absent, you could argue that braking performance would be markedly improved.
No squeal in wet weather would be my #1 criterion, if there was any way to guarantee it…
FWIW, I’ve had no noise with non-fancy Shimamo rotors, but the (now-obsolete) Dura-Ace ones I had several years ago were banshee-like in the wet, then quiet again when they dried. Very aggravating.
Two more related questions that I stumbled upon when diving into this disc rotor topic:
Are floating rotors a good idea (in general on bikes and specifically on road/gravel bike)? From my understanding the the floating part helps with pad alignment which on paper should lead to better braking performance and more even pad wear.
On the topic for brake squeal, my understanding is that it’s at least somewhat connected to the type of brake pad used. There’s organic, semi-metallic and sintered in order of hardness. The harder the brake pad the more likely they are to squeal. As a trade-off the softest, organic pad wear the fastest. Is my understanding correct and are there other trade offs to consider? For now I’ll just run the stock organic brake pads that came with my GRX610 but I’ll have to replace them eventually.
