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Brake ducts in headlight buckets-sound good?


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I'm hoping for a reaction/advice from the guys who understand the windtunnel tests done in the past. I plan to do some brake ducting to my front brakes this winter, and I'm doing my brainstorming now. I know most folks get their air from the bottom of the airdam, but the holes in my urethane airdam aren't gonna let me do something simple-I'd have to lay up glass and a bunch of painful fab that I'd like to avoid. Since I only need the ducting for track days (pretty rare for me), I was thinking of taking out my headlights and ducting from the gaping hole that I can create by modifying an extra set of gutted headlight buckets. It would take a wopping 4 screws to do the headlight bucket swap at the same time as I put my front slicks on. When I got home, I could swap back to headlights.

 

Are the headlights a relative "high pressure" area that would be ok for that? Or would that be a waste of time/effort? Whatcha think?

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For several years I had the front brakes ducted from the head lights. It is hands down the most effective ducting I've ever had on the track. My current set up is ducting from the air dam vents in the g nose imsa front end. It is not as effective as the head light deal. The difference is not subtle. It is night and day. Eventually going back to the head light ducting.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The headlights certainly do occupy a high pressure area but I can't visualise ducting from there straight down to the brakes, seems like a very inefficient sharp bend ducting run. Generally speaking a fairly straight run from the spoiler would be far more efficient but if mark has found the headlight run works then............

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The headlights certainly do occupy a high pressure area but I can't visualise ducting from there straight down to the brakes, seems like a very inefficient sharp bend ducting run. Generally speaking a fairly straight run from the spoiler would be far more efficient but if mark has found the headlight run works then............

For what its worth ive seen a small handfull of cars with factory brake cooling ducts that make some pretty wicked bends and still provide adequate brake cooling (Check out what some people are running on the c5/c6 vettes for reference-  They make some ridiculously sharp 90 degree bends and still manage to perform relatively well to the best of my knowledge).  But of course I concede its completely possible that due to (in general) a wheel wells tendency to be relatively low pressure, even with inefficient designs they can obtain enough of a pressure differential from the pick up point to the brake point to promote enough air flow.  IF thats true picking up from a notably high area like the headlight bucket, and running the air to a relatively low pressure zone like the wheel well in the z- Id wager that even with an inefficient design youd still get enough air flow to make a note worthy difference in regards to cooling the brakes. 

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With those huge Arizona brakes, you may not even need ducting unless you are REALLY working it on track. I had to plug my ducts for autox. Depends on the pads you run. Full race pads need a little heat.

Yeh, it should not be assumed that extra brake cooling by ducting air or whatever is required in the first place. Particularly with bigger brakes. I use road spec pads on mine, my lap times do not suffer from poor brakes that is for sure.

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It's amazing how much those giant finned rotors disapate heat. Just look at the difference compared to stock. On my previous car well under 200 HP, I never ran ducts on open track days. Or changed pads or rotors for that matter for a few years. They are really overkill for most apps.

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  • 2 months later...

We run headlight  ducts to the brakes on the EP car works well, no problems with the hose start going inboard then up to clear the tires then down and into the duct we run a 3" hose got most of the parts at home depot, if you want to be real trick plum them for alcho/water injection using a washer pump hooked into your brake swithch then you can inject a shot of much cooler charge into the rotor, they use this system on a lot of the enduro cars and is dirt cheap to build. If you get by Huntsville drop by and check it out.

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The the air dam openings are usually more then enough if you build a plenum behind the opening In the air dam and run 3" hose from the plenum. The plenum works to increase pressure in the system and results in more flow at the rotor. Same principle as the huge plenums run on restricted race engines.

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