Alpha’s Ceramic Rotor RS – superlight Spanish carbon disc brake rotors

Lud·dite – ˈlədˌīt/ – noun
a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16).

* a person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology.
* “a small-minded Luddite resisting progress”

I had some of those SiCCC (or whatever their name was) carbon ceramic rotors from a Kickstarter campaign a few years back. They flat out sucked. And the “warrantied” versions flat out sucked too. Not saying it can’t work, but solutions that work in one space aren’t always directly transferable to another. But they might be on the right track make this a combined rotor and pad solution.

Without more information I think it’s a little early to either hail or condemn this product, but as usual, there are plenty of people willing to pass judgement without any direct experience using it. At various times I’ve been told that: 9 tooth cogs don’t work for a variety of reasons, gearhubs are horribly draggy, Di2 won’t work with a 9 tooth cog, you can’t fit a square taper Campy crank on a square taper Shimano bb… The list goes on. The two things that all of those people had in common was that they were all sure that they were right, and they were all proved WRONG in the real world. Before you decide that a thing will or won’t work it might be a good idea to try it and see…

I remember TruckerCo made carbon rotors. I remember seeing a couple of guys running them in 2014 or so.They worked poorly. I asked the rep about them at a race a while back and he said they could never make them work, something about not building up enough heat.

please check failure of these rotors on the web . very dangerous to use them.

Ok mechanical engineer here: Let’s clear things up a bit.

-First off, a quick look around forums reveals that these a prone to failure, which makes sense because this is not the way to make a carbon rotor. Bike Rumor, you guys have a responsibility to update these kinds of posts. Are you not concerned with the well being of your viewers?

– Secondly, these are not at all related to F1 and MotoGP type brakes (Carbon Carbon). Their closest cousins in behaviour are carbon ceramic road brakes, as those found in supercars. Still far off, as those rotors require months of silicon carbide deposition in an oven, hence their cost prohibitive nature.

The bottom line: These will work when cold, but not perfectly. They will work better with heat, but will delaminate (which makes me think that they are using regular epoxy resin with additives to enhance the bite and hardness, but nothing appropriate for the heat). Don’t buy these. Steer clear, no matter how much you’d like to save 120g.

Attention! Cauttion! Be carreful! I bought one of these rotor and even when respecting all the conditions of use it was destroyed after few kilometres. You will notice that there is no Phone on their web pages: impossible to contact them directly. When you claim the rotor they didn’t answer. You will receive no invoice, so no address of return is possible and you will not find it on the web pages. On top of that the paiement is not secured! All this is very very very strange and all this looks like as a big SCAM. If you want pictures of the destroyed rotor (disc) I can send it to anybody…

I’m planning to use them on a battery electric reverse trike, with 3 hub wheel motors. Since the hubs add to unsprung weight, I want to keep the unsprung weight as low as possible. It’s should be very effective in stopping and developing very little friction, since I’m using brake regeneration and the brakes are usually applied with less than 5mph.