Project S2000 – Part 16 – Testing Track Upgrades

Project S2000 – Testing Track Upgrades and Custom Brake Ducts

By Khiem Dinh

Khiem Dinh is an engineer for Honeywell Turbo Technologies at the time of this writing.  All statements and opinions expressed by Khiem Dinh are solely those of Khiem Dinh and not reflective of Honeywell Turbo Technologies.

All of the stars aligned a few weeks ago and I took Project S2000 to the track.  Centerforce clutch and AP1 flywheel – installed and broken-in, Hasport engine mounts – installed and broken-in, custom brake ducts – prototyped and test-fitted, K.R.O.P.S holding track day at Willow Springs – scheduled, other MotoIQ project cars going – check.  Custom brake ducts?  Let’s start with those.

I’ve been meaning to design some new brake ducts for a long time to replace my ghetto-ducts.  I had two requirements: be easy to install quickly and be effective.  Though I had no numbers to back up the effectiveness of my ghetto-ducts, I did track the car with and without the ducts on separate occasions.  During a track day at Chuckwalla in hot 95F air temps with the ducts, the brakes seemed to remain relatively cool and no roasted pad smell.  The track day last January at Streets of Willows in 45F air temps with no brake ducts resulted in some pad smell when braking down the main straight.  So even though it was about 50F degrees cooler, it seemed the brakes were getting hotter without the ducts attached.

While the ghetto ducts were cheap and seemingly effective, they were a bit of a pain to install.  I zip-tied them on in three locations: front undertray, Whiteline subframe brace, and the bottom of the shock.

To meet the functional requirement of being effective at cooling the brakes, I decided to go with an enclosed tube design as the 2″ tubing I used for the ghetto-ducts seemed to work just fine.  To meet the requirement of being quick and easy to install, I borrowed the control arm mounting concept used on my old 2005 Evo and also used across Porsche’s entire vehicle lineup.

My old Evo and many Porsches use an air deflector mounted to the control arm to guide air towards the brake rotors.  These guides poke down into the airstream beneath the car to grab air.  The Viper and Corvette also have brake cooling schemes which duct air from the front bumper towards the back side of the wheels, though they don’t go all the way to the rotor.

The Evo utilizes these little air guides attached to the front control arms.

As you saw in my Nerd’s Eye View of the LA Auto Show, the Porsche Cayman employs these air guides to cool the front brakes.

The Porsche GT3RS uses these rear brake ducts attached to the rear control arms.  These rear ducts differ from the front ducts as the rears are fully enclosed ducts as opposed to just air guides.  Photo from suncoastparts.com