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Brake cooling ducts


nismoluv

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Hello everybody, its been awhile. I have been thinking about designing some front brake backing plates/dust shields with cooling ducts. My backing plates where mangled and discarded long ago so I have nothing to compare my cardboard mockups with. I am have some clearance issues with the sway bar which narrows down to an inch or so. I am wondering is anyone has any pictures of cooling ducts or modified backing plates on the ZX. 

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These are ITS 240Z, but same concept for a ZX. You have the advantage of vented rotors, so you don't really need the duct that blows down over the rotor, the one that blows at the hub area will supply your air to the vents to expel. I had to add the 3rd duct for Road Atlanta after Panoz took out the dip and turn 11 (and eliminated what separated the men from the boys) but I don't have a picture or the real parts handy.

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These look great, gives me some ideas to play with. Here is my current space to work with. I was going to connect the ducting straight into the center of the rotor. But i like the idea of coming down vertically into/thru the shield. There is about an inch from the sway bar to the cardboard mockup "shield"

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Straight into the center of the rotor is what you want- a vented rotor is going to naturally expel the air out the periphery, also helps keep the wheel bearings cool. In our class we were limited to 14" wheels so there wasn't a lot of clearance between the rotor or caliper to the wheel. Is this for street? Autox? Track?

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The way i was routing it before, the cross section was smaller (less volume) for longer and it was a half moon type shape. it was getting more complicated when at full lock. going vertical i can get to a larger cross section and clear the sway bar sooner. or so i think. ;) fusion 360 and 3d printing to start before making it out of something more metal  :flamedevi

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My impression is that you don't want the backing plate to cover the face of the rotor as that prevents the heat from dissipating as quickly, which is why my mine fit into the center of the hat. I'll leave it to Keith to comment on that. His setup was for a solid 240Z rotor with different considerations, but IIRC he moved on to E36s after he left the Z scene so I'm sure he'd have some other race cars to draw from.

 

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While we are on the topic, any suggestions on what this should look like for a non-vented rotor? We can now use cross drilled, but still stuck on the OEM calipers 😕 

 

makes total sense that the centrifugal force will cause a vented rotor to flow air out the slots from inside the hat, but not very familiar with how to plumb to a solid rotor. 

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Great memory Jon, yes after the SCCA outlawed my remote reservior shocks I built 2 E36's, won another ARRC, and then they slapped that Sonic Intake Restrictor on the E36's and killed the motors so we quit SCCA.  Anyway, vented or not, I'd try to avoid as much of the standard backing plate as possible. It's there on a street car to keep mud and water off the rotor.  AydinZ71 are you talking about an EP car? What tracks are you racing at? Example: Roebling Road no problem. Road Atlanta big problem. But if you're stuck with solid rotors and calipers, what we did for ducting is about all you can do. See pics above.  I'll try to see if I have a picture of the duct overtop of the caliper.

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@katman yes indeed! Regional EP here in Southern California, so most of my time will be at Willow springs. Greg has been my

mentor for the past year but I try not to bug him too much on the stuff I need to hand fabricate. He points me in the general direction which is a huge help!

 

I will try to mirror what you accomplished on your ITS car. Any particular strategy? Trying to get air flow to the leading edge of the rotor? I definitely lack experience here. I acknowledge eliminating as much of the backing plate as possible. I don’t even have one at this time, so I will be fabricating it from scratch. I have one 3” duct nozzle to draw from on my air dam. 
 

Unfortunately I enclosed my headlight buckets without realizing its forbidden in EP, so il probably run vintage to start. I do have spare steel buckets I can swap out when attempting EP. In that event, il duct air straight from the OEM headlight opening to the brakes like Greg did on his EP car. 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

You could do this. It gets busy, but there's 2 intakes for ducts on either side of the air dam and one beside the grill, all ITS legal at the time. For Willow you probably don't need the third duct to the top of the brake pads blowing down, just the duct on the hub and the "can" splitting the air to both sides of the rotor.

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So I have made progress on 3d modeling the parts. I am on my third iteration, slowly making the part smaller and easier to fabricate. This I just saw this from Carrol Shelby. Notice the cut out for the steering linkage. Now I have to have a re-think. 

https://www.carrollshelbyracing.com/store/p356/Brake_Duct_Cooling_Kit.html

 

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My current model is bolting a slim bracket to the back of the brake caliper bracket. Remove one bolt, loosen the other. (Pictures later). This will eliminate the need to remove the rotor for those of us that previously could not remove the rusted on dust shield and opted to drillout the screws, making the holes unusable with out some rethreading (too much work). The issue I have with this current idea is that the bracket gets a little flimsy in places and when i bulk it up it looks dumb. If i look at making cut outs like the shelby stuff, i can make things look more attactive. Although the shelby stuff look a little too big. 

 

The main thing is I have two bolts to bolt this thing too and its a little chunky on the other aide of the mounting bolts. 

 

An idea I am entertaining is a clamp on the strut that has a bar that you clamp the brake duct too. I think thats the simplest thing i can think of. 

 

Any thoughts.

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1. No one is going to see your brake ducts. They're behind the wheels and should 100% be form over function. 

 

2. Half an hour with a hand drill and a tap is all it would take to make the 4 holes usable again. 

 

3. You're just feeding air to the center of the rotor, so the shield/bracket shouldn't need to be very big

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