RDA or DBA rotors?

[madboy]

As the topic says, RDA rotors and EBC Ultimax pads from global auto spares or DBA and bendix from superdupa cheap?

My roadster is simply a daily driver and will most likely never see track, I am on a very tight budget so $50 per front and $60 per rear rotor RDA are pretty damn cheap. also the EBC Ults are $70 a set

DBA are obviously are tried and tested brand name but I hear very little about RDA.

Any opinions?

Cheers
MB

[Fatty]

i've got RDA slotted rotors on the front, and PBR rotors on the back (this was the best "bang for buck" combination that i could find). i got them from just brakes in campbellfield, vic. i've had no problems with them at all.

i had DBA slotted rotors previously, when my brakes were the standard na6 brakes. i had a few problems with brake fade and warped rotors etc, so i was a little dissapointed with the DBA's. this was with a turbo tho, so they were getting a fair bit more punishment than a standard car would dish out.

i swapped to the RDA / PBR combo when i upgraded to NA8 brakes, and they've been flawless. i know it's a bit of an apples to oranges comparison seeing as the sizes are different, but the RDA's have coped with anything i've thrown at them, including plenty of track days.

[project.r.racing]

Nothing wrong with RDA. Same product as DBA but for less.

[Hellmun]

If it's not a trackcar the RDA's should be fine. I run them on the back of my car and they've been surviving quite well but then the rear brakes of an mx5 aren't exactly high load. I've been using DBA's on the front as from speaking to a number of other racers the DBA's stand up significantly better to race pads. I get upto 3-4 sets of race pads on a DBA rotor before they need to be replaced. I killed my stock rotors very quickly, so since then I'm only on my second set of DBA's in 3 years. They've seen an awful lot of tracktime too... expensive for a road car though.

I can't see rotor metal compound having much to do with how much heat soak there is, remember the ridges only escape some of the gas from the burning resin otherwise it's just a metal contact surface. Rotors only crack/explode past a certain heat point rather than cause fade. The resin in your pads are what's likely coming apart and lubricating the contact surfaces which gives you fade so I wouldn't blame your DBA's fatty. Unless the fluid was boiling in the caliper. Every few trackdays I just undo the bleed nipple and push the pad back to evacuate the fluid in the caliper. I get absolutely no fade at all anymore. Love my brakes

[Fatty]

hi mark, yeah i realise that. the fade was more likely caused by the pads and fluid, rather than the rotors. altho as i mentioned the dba rotors did warp a bit.

i agree the dba's are better quality but they are also a fair bit more expensive. and as you say, for a road car the rda's are more than good enough. my rda's are doing a fine job, altho if money was no object i would be running the dba's too.

[Hellmun]

No worries James. I invest in DBA's for the non-explode factor mostly . I still get fatigue marks which are a worry but I've had my rotors glowing and some Ferodo's DS3000 on fire doing some mountain driving . The DBA's are holding up very well.

My latest set has only really been on the track but even then...I have lost all 3 of my heat markers again. Reading the DBA site they shouldn't change to white until they've been at that temperature for over 10 minutes combined. So trackwork has seen over 700C spikes which the rotors are surviving. Though in the wakefield 300 enduro last year I think the slowest laps me and Andrew did were 1:14's and mostly 1:12's without traffic and the brakes never faded once for either of us the entire 3 odd hours. During all this though I've had the RDA's on the rear with race pads and they pretty much look the same as when I bought them. Metal can't be that soft. They've got an aggressive pad on them too, Carbotech XP16's on front and XP12's on the rear. So for me both rotors have been fine, only things I go through are pads too quickly.

[Hellmun]

Btw were they DBA4000's or the street spec? Even my stock mazda ones didn't warp..they just were getting thin pretty quick and I really needed the slots. Though the NB8B brakes are a fair bit beefier than an NA6's.

[rascal]

I have ran with both DBAs and RDAs on my prev track car (sprints only..) and I couldnt notice any difference in performance or feel between them, the price advantage of the RDAs being the only difference...