John Magnuson

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

1FunR1

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

rajeevx7

iTrader: (11)

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.

FDWarrior

iTrader: (6)

usefull

grimple1

iTrader: (1)

and nearly 3 years old

FDWarrior

iTrader: (6)

^ 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.

John Magnuson

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.

MrNizzles

iTrader: (5)

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

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

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

MrNizzles

iTrader: (5)

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 *****, 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.

FDWarrior

iTrader: (6)

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

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

IIRC, he has the N-Tech ducts.

John Magnuson

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 ***** 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.

Tim Benton

iTrader: (1)

You ever get around to painting them?

Tim

John Magnuson

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

justturbo2

iTrader: (4)

nice. looks like they are going to work real well