Pictures of my custom brake duct inlets
 

After trying a few less than satisfactory methods of plumbing my ducted front brakes to the front of the car I went ahead and had a friend of mine that works art a BMW racing shop fabricate some custom front brake ducts. Attached to this post are some pictures.

They're made of aluminum and are fairly low profile so they won't scrape easily on dips or driveways. I think my friend went a little over kill on the inlet area. But he insists that you should have an inlet area that is 2.5 to 3 times the side of your duct hose.

Yes, I'm going to paint the little red bolts that hold the bottom of the duct to the lip spoiler black at a future date.

I have not yet tried these at the track. My last setup worked well at the track but hung down too long and would get ripped off on the street on. I expect to run at Buttonwillow raceway next Sunday so I'll see how they do.

Looks weird from the front of the car, but its obviously not there for looks. Totally BADASS man!!

-Alex

Ya...I laughed at the 1st and 3rd pic but the rest are very impressive. I don't think I would have this setup for a street driven car but otherwise very nice.

Paint them flat black like the lip and you won't hardly notice them. Maybe even trim them back a little bit to hide them some more but they look good and functional.

What kind of duct do you have on the brake side? The Ntech ones?

Awesome work, very creative...

how visable are they when the car is sitting on the ground?

Mazda was out of R1/2 brake ducts? :p:

Very innovative man, do have any pics of the car on the ground? That way we can see how visible it really is.

Nice work, definitely paint them!!

You should paint the duct black also. If I saw your car in a parking lot, and I looked for stock brake ducts, and I saw these actual enclosed ducts in its place, I'd be like :eek:

Nice job.

Jeremy

Actually it's not super noticable when the car is on the ground. I'll post some pics later. The fact that the car is silver helps make them not stand out too much. But you all are definately correct that if I paint them black they'd probably blend in much better.

Yes, the brake rotor backing plastes are from NTech.

I used to have the R1 lip spoiler and ducts. The fact is that the factory R1 equipment really doesn't cool the brakes much at all. After I got the NTech brake rotor backing plates the first thing I tried was plumbing the original R1 lip spoiler duct opening to the brake air hose. The brakes would still get too hot due to the very small size of the inlet area (at the track only of course). Then I used a generic plastic brake duct inlet from a racing supply store placed behind the R1 lip spoiler. This worked well because it was rather large and would collect air from both the R1 lip spoiler inlet and from underneath the car. But since it was so big it hung down really low and would often scrape and even get broken off when driving on the street.

That's when I decided to let my friend help me with the setup I have now. Of course this setup is entirely unneccessary for street driving. But I hope it will provide two things: 1) Large enough inlet area to work well at the track 2) Low profile enough to not scrape too often on the street.

i agree! flat black would look great

Those look very slick. A little paint and they'll practically disappear.

Look At That M1 In The First Pic!!!!!1!!1

They have some CRAZY cars there. That M1 is totally stock. The owner also has a full racing spec M1 (very fine replica of the actual factory M1 race car). I think it's for sale if you're only interested... only 140K. HAHA!

Nice job, you're ducts look sweet! The best part, is that they look extremely functional. You'll have to let us know how they work out on the track!

Update... so I've had these on for 8 months now and about 10 trackday weekends. No fading at the track even when I beat them as hard as I can. Work great on the street too! In other words they haven't ripped off when I've taken a dip or driveway too fast. Still have not painted them... I'll get to it.

John, out of curiosity, do you know if the hose is necessary to direct the air? Do cars like the Porsche Turbo have hoses after the duct in the front bumper directing the air as such? Or is it just done w/ an inlet + fins, and air moving through the fender lining, as I understand happens on the R model FD's?

I've got the N-Tech ducts as well.
are there a circular areas on the back ends of the r1/r2 ducts to clamp the hoses onto?

or does someone here have any pics of the back side of the ducts out of the car?

Having a dedicated hose directing air directly into a sealed center section is the best for cooling. It will ensure that all the air from the duct inlets is pushed through the vents in the rotors.

I'm not sure how many factory cars if any have a ducting system exactly like the setup my car and other track cars have. Most factory Porsches I've seen have brakes ducts that just direct air at the brakes. Kinda like the R1 but a bit better.

no such luck. the r1 ducts are not set up to accept a round hose

Just curious, are you running stock brakes?

13" Front Rotors with Wilwood SL6 Calipers and RZ model rear brakes. Details here:

https://www.rx7club.com/race-car-tech-103/yes-m2-wilwood-13-brake-kit-actually-fits-under-stock-16-fd-wheels-298706/

those are nice but a brake duct from www.racerpartswholesale.com/ should be good enough. They will just take a little effort to fit. This is what I plan on using with the ntechs and a ap kit. I just have way too many projects. They are plastic but only $15 a peice.

Or have you tried something simular and it was not good enough? Mike

Looks awesome man. Sleek and functional, can't ask for a better pair. Great job john.

I had something similar before. I tie strapped a generic plastic inlet duct like the one in your picture in place of the R1 brake ducts. You can kind of see them hanging down from the front lip in the attached picture.

The problem was that since I drive the car on the street also they hung down too far and would scrape on dips and driveways and break off eventually. I could not find aftermarket ducts that were low profile enough. I couldn't find any alternative to mounting the ducts behind the bottom lip because anything else would require blocking airflow to the oil coolers or radiator (not an options) or cutting up the front clip (yuck).

By the way, if any of your are interested in these ducts my friend who fabricated them sold the templates to Ken, a forum member in San Diego. His username is: 1FunR1

You could PM him and see if he wants to sell you the templates or do a group buy. Might be expensive.... it was not easy to make (30 hours labor for my friend to design and fabricate).

-John

I have a good friend who owns a machine shop looking into this project for me. If there is any interest, I can try to arrange a group buy. I have no idea at this time what pricing would be. Let me know your interest though...
-Ken

If you buy a factory race car (competition coupe, Dodge..etc) then they all have hoses to direct air to the front brakes. As do most of the super cars w/ rear 1/4 panel ducts. Most factory cars just have air deflectors like, but better, the FD R-types.
The fender lining in our cars doesn't have to do w/ the brakes. It is designed to channel the air that comes out of the oil coolers over the wheel and out the vent in the fender.

usefull

and nearly 3 years old

^ Im doing brake ducts on my car and wanted to be able to use this thread when it comes time. I just wanted it saved in my posts. Just because it's 3 years old dosent make it a useless thread.

yes, I still enjoyed reading it after 3 years! ;)

As a side note I should say that the ducts are still on the car and in tact and fully functional after 3 years. The car still sees a lot of street, track and rally use and the brakes have never been a problem since installing the ducts.

John, just curious, in the last 3 years with tracking the car as much as you have, how is the engine/tranny holding up? Any rebuilds recently?

And yes, had this thread not been resurrected, I would not have seen all this cool info about brake ducting and kits... in fact there should be a sticky that has several threads just on this topic! sooo =p

^oh boy. don't ask him about that!

I'm just curious what kind of wear and tear 10-12 tracking sessions a year has on a well built, reliable FD. I just had mine completely rebuilt; stock motor with BNR's, new clutch and radiator with upgraded brake dicscs and rebuilt calipers, new bushings and pillow balls, lots of other stuff ... but I wonder what a half dozen track days in the next year will do to the car and what have others had to do, etc.

where did you get the brake shields that have the air inlets.

IIRC, he has the N-Tech ducts.

Hmmm... well since I've gone through 3 motors in the last two and a half years this is hard to answer.

From 2002-2006 I probably did about 30 track weekend on a stock factory rebuilt engine with about 40K street miles on it to start. A coolant seal failed after four years of track abuse and this lead to the first rebuild.

The first rebuild never ran right and kept getting worse. Turns out that some of the aftermarket seals used were machined incorrectly bye the manufacturer which caused a compression problem.

The motor was then rebuilt again under warranty using factory seals. It ran really well but on my first track outing with the car I ran the car too low on fuel and blew all the apex seals when I starved the motor for fuel in a hard turn. Oops.

The motor was then rebuilt again and I went ahead and ported the motor and went to single turbo. This motor ran fine for a few months until I somehow managed to drop some debris in the motor while troubleshooting some ignition and turbo seal problems.

The motor was then rebuilt again with a less aggressive port and I switched to another single turbo system. So far this motor has held up well.

As you can see all the failures were due to faulty parts or user error. The fact is a rotor motor should last you a long time as long as you keep the temperatures under control. Make sure you have good oil and coolant temps.

My original tranmission went out about 3 years ago (noisey bearing) so I replaced it with a used Jspec transmission and have had no problems.

Everything else on the car seems to hold up well. I've had to replace a few suspension bushings - the rear pillow balls and front lower control arm bushings seem to wear out the fastest.

It sounds like your car is pretty well sorted. Make sure you have the dual R1 oil coolers at least.

You ever get around to painting them?

Tim

Sigh... no never did. Too many other projects I guess.

nice. looks like they are going to work real well