Rear rotor question!
Thread Starter
Burning Brakes
Joined: Dec 2011
Posts: 858
Likes: 75
From: Medford, Oregon
Rear rotor question!
I have searched for any threads related to a unanswered question I have, with no results, so I thought I would throw it out to someone in the forum to enlighten me. Last week I had all my rotors resurfaced and installed new disc pads. This ended up triggering an old question in my mind as to why 1/4 of the rear rotor surface area is unused or touched by the disc pad. With all the 'big brake' improvements made to almost all performance sport cars, that Chevrolet Corvette engineers would have designed such a small diameter rear caliper/rotor design and still leave a 1/4 of that braking surface unused for our Corvettes. It just makes me shake my head when I go into a performance train of thought or just doing any cleaning or maintenance to suspension and wonder 'Why'. So for the real engineer/tech heads out there, please help me put this old question to bed because it's driving me 
. Thanks! 
Last edited by 2FAS4UU; Dec 9, 2014 at 11:22 PM.
Burning Brakes
Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 749
Likes: 13
From: SoCal CA
Without seeing a picture of where the unused part of the rotor is, I'll take a guess that it's the inside part. The outside edge of the rotor is where the most leverage is available, so I'm guessing that the calipers are designed to take advantage of that fact. Also, most information on C5 brakes shows that the standard size calipers and rotors provide excellent braking, with the exception of serious road racing, where bigger brakes improve the fade resistance. Most big brake kits are installed for cosmetic reasons, since they're not needed for the street.
Melting Slicks
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 2,990
Likes: 346
From: Mt. Pleasant S.C.
Most of the braking a car does is at the front. If you make the rears too much stronger then you have an unbalanced situation and a car that wants to go *** first when you brake.
The rear brakes are balanced pretty well. The engineers knew what they were doing.
The rear brakes are balanced pretty well. The engineers knew what they were doing.
Team Owner
Joined: May 2001
Posts: 87,367
Likes: 1,593
From: Western NY
