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KWAWD
24-09-2014, 08:36 AM
I was surprised to discover that the front rotors get way hotter than the rear.
Pulled into a car wash, got out, got change and sprayed water over the front fender and the rotors literally sizzled like a BBQ. The rears instantly evaporated the water too, but didn't sizzle.

I thought with EBD and even AWD that the rotors would all be working fairly evenly.

TreeAdeyMan
24-09-2014, 08:51 AM
On most reasonably modern cars, including AWD Magnas, the front brakes do 90% of the braking. Even with EBD. That's why you will almost always find that the front rotors, calipers and pads are significantly bigger than the rears.
One exception (to the 90% front rule) is the XF Jaguar which has quite strong 'anti-dive' built into the EBD program. A highish proportion of the braking force is fed to the rears, which reduces 'dive'. The result is that on an XF the rear pads and rotors wear out faster than the fronts. But even then the XF front brakes are a lot bigger than the rears.

MadMax
24-09-2014, 08:54 AM
Probably not a smart idea to spray water on hot discs . . .

d1ng0d4n
24-09-2014, 10:21 AM
You may have warped or damaged discs from spraying water on them, when they're hot.

KWAWD
24-09-2014, 10:51 AM
Probably not a smart idea to spray water on hot discs . . .
I know, it was just overspray. They'd get more splash in a good downpour...But the sizzle took me by surprise, haven't heard it before. Maybe i just missed the wheels before...

MadMax
24-09-2014, 11:51 AM
Probably no harm done.
Spraying water on them just to see how hot they are, is a no-no though.
Still a lot smarter than touching the discs and smelling burning skin/feeling pain/losing fingerprints though! (Yes, I did that once!)

HKS
06-12-2014, 10:14 PM
get it checked out man don't want your tyres melting.

Madmagna
08-12-2014, 05:47 AM
Get what checked out and how on earth are you going to melt tyres.........

Dean, this is perfectly normal, on the Magna as stated above, fronts do most of the braking.

I would personally give a few minutes for heat to drop before I got brakes wet however I doubt there has been any issues, you will know if you have warped rotors but in honesty you would need to drown really hot rotors for this to happen

MadMax
08-12-2014, 09:56 AM
It's not the sizzle, it's sudden temperature changes that may damage a rotor. A bit of overspray that evaporates quickly is hardly going to change the temperature of the rotor much.

Now if you took the rotor off the car, heated it red hot, then dropped it into a bucket of water . . .

For those who didn't know, brakes get hot. So does the cooling system. So does the exhaust system. So does the whole engine. Let it all cool before you point a hose at any of it, just to be safe.