This past weekend I was at VIR for a couple instructor clinics, and time trials. As apart of the instructor clinic we had a good chunk of track time to use on our own for Friday. In my very first session, first hot lap, 4th turn (3rd time on the brakes) my rotor separated around the hat, lots of pieces went flying, and split into two main halves.

This took out my caliper, tie rod end, beat up the bottom of the control arm a little bit, and took some chunks out of my wheel well.

At first I thought my pads had exploded or something, but this is what I saw when I got out after pulling off on an access road.



It was pretty shocking once I got the wheel off and took a good look at what exactly happened. I was very, very lucky that this happened right as I was about to come off the brakes, and the turn was one of the slowest on the course.




Luckily my boss drives an Evo as well, and sort of owed me one, and my Dad was planning on coming down to the track early Saturday morning. They got his caliper and rotor, and a new tie rod end from Fisher Auto Parts. We swapped the parts over but realized things weren't lining up. The caliper was touching the rotor.

We took a closer look at things and realized the mounting tabs on the knuckle bent before the caliper failed.


We tried spacing the caliper with washers, but it wasn't helping. We thought if we could just grind the tab down so things lined up again, we could then space the caliper appropriately. Luckily Carlos of AutoDynamix, LLC was at the track offering welding/fabrication services. He had the tab ground down in no time! Offering services like that for free really helps at the grassroots level.


Nice and evenly spaced again:


The washers we used to space the caliper:


We got everything back together just in time for the last timed session on Saturday (my first/only one).

 

Wow, cracked a stock brembo caliper in 1/2. And a rotor. That's crazy. I've read of some cracked rotor or caliper issues before with different vehicles and they usually end up with pretty catastrophic results to the car and/or driver unfortunately.

Nice work to get it all back together and back out on track!

What did you determine to be the failing point then?
Was something cracked before you went out on track?

 

Holy snikeys!

Nice finish to the weekend though! Glad it didn't take out the wheel too. That could have ended much worse for you.

 

wow thats pretty crazy. What brand rotor is that?

 

damn thats crazy!

 

Haha, nice, FTW too What rotor/pads were you using? That indeed could have sucked, you got a roll bar, or are going to get one now right?

 

Nice work Justin

Slummin it with the Evo

-Troy

 

Yeah, what rotors are these? I had no issues with stock solid ones. I read a good article about the metal quality is some cheaper knock off rotors and never went that route since.

 

The rotor was a Powerslot. I was using DTC-60's.

I always get spider webbing cracks in the middle of the rotors, so I check inside and out to make sure nothing is out to the edge. Everything was fine when I checked that morning. Jay Andrew of Andrew Racing thinks it might have been a casting defect, and I was just the unlucky one to get this rotor. He added there was nothing I could have done to prevent this. He mentioned that even some very reputable companies will have 1 out of every 300 or so rotors fail from casting defects during tests.

I normally track my Dad's 04 STi which has a rollbar/harnesses. It's still in off-season upgrade mode, but I didn't want to miss out on the clinic. Since I get free track time for instructing I got to use that for TT instead of running with all the other instructors in HPDE4. I also use the Evo whenever the STi has been down, which hasn't been too frequent. So for now, I don't plan on getting rollbar for it.

I was shooting for under 2:15's, I ended up doing a 2:13.4XX. That's with Star Specs, and my only suspension mods being Tein S-Techs. I've run a 2:09.6XX in the STi on VIR Full, so I was pretty happy with how I did. I also had fun chasing down a few cars that were on comp rubber.

 

Looks like a cheap street/show cast rotor. Only good for car shows not racing. Make sure you buy milled rotors not cast crap....

 

Although I haven't used them, I thought ATE Powerslot rotors were of good quality. Is this not so?

 

I've been fighting the urge to buy high end rotors because I've had excellent luck with the ebay stuff. I wish the 2 piece setups weren't soo expensive. I can a new set of blanks at bumper to bumper for $90. Of course I would hate to drive the car into a wall because I skimped on brakes. Grrrr.

 

^^^^ These aren't two-piece floating rotors.

 

true enough, but they are customized two piece(s)

 

Got the PFC 2-piece rotors and have had no problems with them, other than what I would expect due to the extreme usage.