Now I can't be the first to have noticed this...

I was at Home Depot looking at hot water heaters because that's just where I happened to be standing while waiting for my gf who was in the bathroom Anyways the vents that poke through the roof for gas appliances could very easily be made into backing plates Essentially it's a 12" square tin with a 3" diameter duct a few inches long sticking out of it. Some of the ducts are even already on a slant so that your duct ends up pointing straight up even with steep roof pitch. They're cheap as hell. You could buy a stack and cut them up until you got the correct shape. I'm looking into it...







This is sort of like what I saw except the ones I was looking at didn't have tapered tubes; they were straight.

 

I've noticed similar things (maybe not those EXACT ducts) while in hardware stores and thought the same thing.
I don't see any reason why it won't work.

 

Are you proposing this as an inlet? Or as the backing plate at the brake rotor?

 

You'd think that they'd work well wouldn't you? On a 1st gen, they wont. You end up having to slice and dice so much that you should have just started with a flat piece of steel.

The problem is that the wheel has to turn left and right which calls for a very short duct as well as one that is pointing essentially straight forward when the wheel is turned. Then you have to deal with the fact that you want the air flowing through the rotor veins from the center out rather than just blowing on the rotor, which might lead to rotor warpage in extreme driving (road racing/track days).

 

stupid computers :angry:

 

grrrr.

 

DamonB,

I've been looking at the same things. I have a HD just 2 minutes from me. Unforunately, things are tight for me financially at the moment or I would get on that N-Tech duct deal going on.

But, whenever I get the other stuff done on my car (and it warms up), I'm going to look at using something like that. My garage isn't heated and it's been damn cold!

 

As a backing plate. The way I picture it you'd still probably have to fab up a backing plate yourself, but these pieces from could then easily used as the inlet to the backing plate since they come in different angles. Handily the duct is already 3" and it saves you the most complex part of the fabrication: joining a round tube to the backing plate at an angle and keeping the joint air tight.

 

I think Speed covered why it wont work for that. I did my own poor mans duct a while back. I simply bent the stock vent out a bit, then took some fresh air hose (3" IIRC) , bent the end into a rectangle and pop riveted it to the vent, then sealed the gaps with RTV. Ran the duct to the inner part of the fender well, tie wrapped it to the brake like bracket (leaving just enough slack for the wheel to turn left and right), then ran the duct forward to the front of the car.