Calling all vendors - front brake ducting
 

Can someone please develop a kit that turns the front nostril blanks into a directed front brake cooling vent?

It seems like there has to be a way to take air from those two locations into a pair of ducts and route them through the fender wells onto the brakes. Judging from comments on here, I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who would buy such a kit. Is it just too difficult to work around the constraints of that location, or are people more interested in selling BBKs to care about cooling?

I realize that this will push more air under the car, which might slightly increase lift. But if it can allow us to get away with a pad and two-piece rotor swap instead of a BBK for track use, it would be well worth it.

Maybe I should make a poll - how much would you pay for such a kit? Speaking for myself, I'd be up for $400 if it was well engineered, included all applicable parts, and required minimal cutting.

Anyone else interested?

Oh, and if you're already working on it, now might be a good time to say so ;)

For those interested, I've been doing a bit more research on this. A couple of sites have some good guidance on brake ducting:

How to Control Brake Temperature - Stock Car Racing Magazine
How To Install Brake Ducts

Airflow for us might a bit limited through the stock fang inlets. The real trick is delivering air to the center of the rotor. This surprisingly good InsideLine how-to has some good shots of the problem, although it doesn't show the side of the rotor I really want to see.

2009 Nissan 370Z: DIY Brake Pad and Rotor Change, Part 2

It seems to me there are three main challenges:

1. Routing - need to check what is between the bumper cover and the fender (can anyone else weigh in on this?)
2. Nozzle - I really like the nozzle the guy uses in the Zhome article above, but I'd have to figure out some fabrication.
3. Movement allowance for turning and suspension - this is what makes me a bit nervous. It's one thing to make a duct for a track car that only gets limited mileage, but designing a duct that can work safely for 10K miles or more is a bit tricky.

Anyway, suggestions/thoughts/comments welcome. I may try to embark on this in the next month or so if it seems workable.

Here's an idea that will cost you almost nothing.......

Done on a Audi TT but you get the idea.... Pics: Cooling album | Ttschwing | Fotki.com


http://images25.fotki.com/v948/photo...SCF0061-vi.jpg

That to me looks very cheesy. If I did something like that I would want it to look like quality. Just my .02

WTF does it matter what it looks like when you're trying to cool your rotors for track use?? This is strictly function over form for about $15/side.

Doing this for street use, or to impress your ricer friends is beyond the scope of my intentions...:shakes head:

How are you addressing the brake heating issues on your Z?

LOL.......:icon18::icon18::icon18::icon18::icon18: :icon18::tup:

Pwned. :bowrofl:

as opposed to all the elegant brake ducting kits on the market?

to the OP, the problem right now is the lack of decent track pads for the 'big' calipers - perhaps that will change in the future, but there is not a wide range to choose from.

Proper brake ducting never really looks good. You need large diameter ducts to get enough air through, and the duct has to allow movement for steering and suspension travel. That means you end up with something like this:

Brake Duct Hose : Air Duct Hose : Brake Duct : Duct Hoses : Racing Brake Duct Hoses

Anyway, the issue with the Z that I can see (although a frickin lift would help) is that there are several tricky areas to get through. Then, in order to get air to the center of the rotor you have to get the ducting to the rear side of the front hub, which is not easy. I think it might require some custom injection molded plastic parts to really do the routing right on this car. Next time it's on a lift, I'm going to try taking a better look at the whole thing...

I've had my car on a lift many times already and there is room for it, just takes a little finagling.

I would be willing to try this over buying an entire bbk. This plus aggressive pads will probably cure most brake fade depending on how good the ducting is. I think Corner3 Garage in lake forest is looking for some candidates to develop a kit.

Carbotech has track pads out for the Z. XP10's have a MOT of 1650 degrees, XP8's 1350 - which is a damn sight better than the 500-600 degrees the stock pads are good for. Combined with some ducting I think you could make the stock brakes hold up ok, although you'd probably be replacing the cooked dust boots on a regular basis.

Travis has plans to have one of his shops develop a solution over the winter, and hopefully kit it.

Looks like you took apart your vacuum cleaner to make that.

For what its worth I have had no heat issues with my brake setup on the track and I have put them through some serious abuse the past few events. Not even a hint of fade, stock rotors look fine, pads look great, etc. Here's my setup...

Stock sport pkg. BBK
Stock rotors
Challenge SS brake lines
Carbotech Pads (XP10 front/XP8 rear)
AMSOIL fluid

I don't really think front brake ducts are necessary personally. At least not until these cars start getting much faster. If someone gave me a set I would use them, don't get me wrong, but its not on my to do list yet.

Have you inspected your calipers for damage to the boots? I think it was Mike that managed to cook his off in one day.

I haven't looked in there after these last two events, but after my first 3 events they were fine.

To be fair, it does depend quite a bit on:

The track - obvious

The driver - good drivers will hit higher speeds and need more brakes, *some* bad drivers will just be more heavy on the brakes

Tires - R comps are going to put *way* more heat into the brakes if you are at threshold, and I think the guys who have had the most trouble have sticky tires.

If you haven't seen it - Jalop just posted a nice photo of the brake cooling on the GT1-Spec Nissan GT-R:

Now That's How You Cool Your Brakes - Nissan GT-R - Jalopnik

I believe that we are going to be developing a kit for the brake ducts soon, but we are in need of a track oriented test bed 370z. As for the amount of air moving through the brake ducts there would be little to no amount of lift involved in aerodynamic loss because of the fact that the air would be traveling through the rotor and out the wheel instead of under the car itself.

You live the closet to Corner3, lend them your car for a while. ;)

Can't really talk about it.. but we have some aero pieces coming soon that will definitely address this.. :)

More info soon..

Sweet - thanks for the heads up!

I'm not convinced I want to do the whole front fascia, but I'm definitely curious about what y'all have got going...

:iagree:

Any update on the development of these types of kits and/or aero pieces Josh was referring to?

This is the first time I have seen this thread and I would like to add my input if you all don't mind...

There is a lot to consider when looking at brake ducting. Something like Modshack posted might look pretty ghetto but it will be functional. If you look at a lot of professional race cars they simply add little wicker bills on the lower control arms just to "scoop" some airflow into the brakes. This is one of the many things we did on our Ford GT rally car in fact. We just built little rubber blades and drilled them into the lower control arm and they worked very well.

If you want to make the front fascia fangs your airsource you would need to see what size tubing you can fit up there. For starters, 2.5 inch is the minimum of what you can consider to be "acceptable." Anything smaller than that and you might as well not bother.

Second, take a look at your routing. There is a lot going on back there and you need to route the hoses around coolers, chassis braces, and most likely you will need to cut a hole in the fender well to gain access.

We are going to work on an active cooling kit for our car. Basically I'm going to take the cooling kit that we make for the GT R and make it fit the Z. It isn't cheap but it is incredibly functional and has electric fans and everything...This will be for our race car.

The front fascia is coming along nicely and will be done soon. The brake duct accessory pieces will be available at the same time as the fascia.

Thanks for the update Kyle!

I think if you found a wayto attach air guide to the already existing undertray, you'd be ok. There is already air flowing under the car... if you had a way to evacuate it into the rotors, you might even help with downforce... like this

http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/cor...008/20e_08.pdf