I don’t know how I never noticed before, but my 69 evidently has the original front brake rotors….

One of my calipers sprung a leak, so I figure I’d replace the rotors …. Go to take the rotor off, aaand there are the rivets…. Fml.

where’s the chisel and drill.

its always something.

 

I did what this guy did. Easy peasy.

 

I'm confused by how changing out a perfectly good rotor will repair a leaky caliper.
Granted, I don't know everything. But I'm thinking rebuilding the caliper with a minimum of new seals might work.
Fairly rare to see a problem with the original rotors however.

 

dont replace them if not too thin or warped.. check runout would be good to know.
I only removed my rear rivets to reach the e brake that fell apart.

 

I currently have a 73 in my shop with the original Rivets. I don't recommend removing the Rivets unless the Rotor is Thrashed. And if it is Thrashed, I would be buying a new CNC machined Hub and Rotor and yes I would be Riveting them back together.

 

Some considerations are spelled out in this thread. Be sure to check the runout!

https://www.digitalcorvettes.com/thr...dial-in.77063/

 

I'm 100 percent not interested in YouTube video's. If I wanted to be on YouTube I wouldn't be on this forum!
That said, removing rivets is as easy as drilling the heads and punching them out. If there is actually a good reason to replace the original rotor. (Generally there is not).

 

 

The C3 rotors are very robust. Clean them up with a wire wheel and measure them. If greater than 1.215”, keep them.

Know also that rotor runout is critical so measure that as well. Replacing the rotors and attaining a runout of 0.002” can be a challenge.

 

I also had my original rotors on my car until this summer when rebuilding trailing arms and installing POL tubular a arms. Ive always been in the "If it aint broke " frame of mind and the stock rotors are made of a very hard material that doesnt seem to wear out like todays rotors but my rotors simply looked like crap and had a lot of rust inside the cooling vane area plus I needed to remove the rears to rebuild the non functional e brakes. So I bought some drilled and slotted black zinc coated rotors mainly because I got a crazy deal on them from amazon. in the past ive been critical of the drilled and slotted stuff because its gimmicky on a street car but more and more cars are coming with them so..

I have not had an runoutout issues even though I only actually checked one of the 4 when installing and it was within tolerance. Granted I might still have issues eventually since ive not driven the car all that much since but I like the ceramic pads with there rotors so far. FYI I ended up getting my front and rear rotors from different vendors and one of those vendors on amazon incorrectly sell rear rotors as front rotors so i now have an extra set but along the way I found the exact same rotors are sold at pretty drastically different priced under different brand names even though they come in the same black black with the same part # and sticker on the side..

I also second you tube is a great resource but I like to watch at least a couple videos on every subject before taking advice from there.

 

It's still a gimmick for the street, but if you like the look, more power to you especially if you had a great deal on the rotors.

Slotted pads do the same thing as slotted rotors but cheaper.

Drilled rotors are for the track so the rotors can cool down faster when you repeatedly brake hard which is hardly ever needed on the street.

Then there's brake pads compound, but that's another issue.

 

I’m putting new rotors on while I’m in there replacing the caliper.

 

I agree and didnt buy them because they were slotted but rather because I got the rear rotor set with pads for $50 on an amazon special and they were zinc coated which Ive used before on my old truck and found it dramatically helped with rust prevention... as far as the pads Ive read some are vastly inferior to other which is why I didnt use the pads that came with the rotors but instead I bought the higher end autostop line ceramic rotors which had better reviews.

Are the stock rotors on the new corvettes not drilled and slotted? its kind of like oversized rotors and calipers... They are all the fashion rage right now. One could argue the wilwood systems for our cars are really about show more than anything as well.

 

that's the point, I wouldn't do that.

 

We learned our lesson years ago, we won't use drilled rotors on any of the vintage racers I crew on. I don't know many other racers that use them either. Drilled rotors are just too prone to developing cracks at the holes from expansion and contraction. They also seem to be more prone to warping. The only rotors we use on our Corvette and Camaro race cars are slotted rotors.

I crewed for a Trans Am team in the 80's and even back then all were used were slotted rotors. Most modern Trans Am cars I'm familiar with use either slotted or smooth rotors, not drilled.

Another issue is that both the slotted and the drilled rotors will chew up pads a lot quicker than smooth rotors will. That's not a be deal on the race car where we replace pads on a regular basis, but it's a real waste of money on a street car.