Two Chicago winters for my Z. She was showing her disgust today. Seriously, my hubs didn't even need the four bolts. They were so stuck, I bet I could have driven with them completely unbolted.

mine came off easy too, but a tip for others if its stuck.

Put the rotor back on and secure it with a couple lug nuts and use a rubber mallet on the outside of the rotor to whack it off,,,,haha I said whack it off! ;)

^lol

Hmmm, good idea. While it could have worked, I didn't want to damage my new rotors. FWIW, I'm not sure it would have gotten them off given how stuck they were. Renting the slide hammer was key. For those who don't know what it is, imagine a 5lb weight that slides on a metal bar. On one end is a thread and the other end has a stopper to limit travel. You put the threaded end through the hole in the hub, screw on a big bolt on the back side of the hub, apply traction so the bolt is up against the hub, and then ram the weight into the stopper on the slide hammer. 10 good whacks and it pulled the hub out. Cool tool.

One trick I saw a guy do once was put the wheels back on with the lugs a little loose and then go drive some figure 8's :) I don't think it is very good for the studs but works in a pinch (red-neck mechanics 101).

...sticky rotors = defeat purpose of cooling kit.

Ran the new ducts at MSR Houston this weekend. No front fade or ice-mode issues all weekend w/ the ducts running and the new XP10 front pads.

I duct-taped off the fang intakes for one session (2nd of 4 sessions on the second day) as discussed earlier to compare. With the ducts closed, about 2/3rds into the session I was getting some front pad fade and extended braking distances. Also had one hiccup of ice-mode late in that run that was easy to correct quickly with the pedal. Un-taped the fangs for the next run and the system went right back to zero fade for the rest of the weekend.

I did get the rotor paint and caliper strips shipped to me in time. I ran the same spot of Genesis rotor paint all weekend. It stayed in the "bright red" range (679-804F) all through my first 5 sessions with the ducts, then it bumped up into a somewhat browner color (804-1074F, probably at the lower end of that range, not a huge change) for the one run I taped off the ducts.

I put the Alcon caliper temp strips on the outsides of the calipers (over the Nissan logo) and they never even blacked out the lowest section (250F), regardless of the duct situation. So either my caliper temps are awesome anyways, or it's just stupid user error with me putting the temp strips in the wrong place (do they need to go elsewhere to feel the heat, and/or does the thick grey nissan caliper paint insulate them too much?).

In any case, pretty pleased with the results :)

Great info ... thanks for sharing. Going to look into those cooling strips and paint.

...noob question though...I thought the caliper was actually the item that was most responsible for heating the fluid to the boiling point ?

also I wonder if it would do any good to drill some holes in the dust shields ?

It is, for getting to that fail point. However you will get pad fade and typically experience ice-mode long before the fluid boils. You see higher caliper temps when there is less pad material left, but he had brand new pads in this case.

At that point you might just as well remove them altogether.

Your rotor temps are in-line with what I would expect for your setup. Instantaneous surface temps on the face of the rotor are several hundred degrees higher.

I put my caliper stickers in the same place, got the fronts up to 400F which can be enough to boil the stock fluid, on one occasion I did see 450F. Ambient temperature does play a significant role in that as well as session duration and track layout.

Good results for the ducts I would say.

Great info. As MSR Houston used to be my home track, curious where you would see fade on the track. I never had any issues with my STi, but I got some fade occasionally on my brother's vette.

Mostly my fade spots would be the two areas where I see double braking zones back-to-back going the CCW direction: just before Diamond's Edge, and just before the Bus Stop. In both cases you've got a hard hit on the brakes at the end of a straight to come down from e.g. ~115 -> ~80, then a very brief steady throttle, then another brake hit all the way down to ~45 or so in a very short distance (give or take whatever for car/skill). Whenever I've gotten fade on the track and/or ice-mode problems, it's usually the second brake zone in one of those two spots.

(for those unfamiliar with this track, here's a PDF with the major corner names labeled: http://msrhouston.com/pdfs/RoadCourse-corners.pdf . The first case I'm talking about the braking zones and just before and just after Turn 3 going into Diamond's Edge, and the other pair straddles Turn 7 heading down into Bus Stop).

Here's a video of me going through that sequence: MSR Houston CCW - TDE 20120421 - 370Z - YouTube. The second pair at the end of the back straight looks a lot tamer in that video than it generally is, as on this session I was braking earlier and softer than usual.

Thank you very much for the excellent write-up. By the way, little racers tip, "duct tape" when used on a race car is referred to as "race tape" or "100 MPH tape." If you exceed that speed, you then refer to it as "200 MPH tape." LOL:tup:

:bowrofl: