Budget DIY Brake Cooling

[Kemo]

Over the past couple of afternoons, I have been mentaly putting together a brake cooling kit from scratch. I have seen the AJ kit sold by Smart Racing Products and after looking it over, I thought I would give it a go from just a visual. The sad part is, I could probably just install a block off plate and some 993 deflectors and get the same effect. So just think of this as brainstorming in action.

from the looks of things, it seems the basic components would be the hose from the front of the car to an intermediate tube and then on to the back plate. Also, there is a block off plate made of really thin sheet metal that goes between the rotor and the spacer looking thingy that holds the wheel studs. This forces the air to go thru the vents in the rotors and not get wasted out the side towards the wheel. And I noticed, that 2.5 inch hose seemed to be popular.

looking at the peices, it also seemed that the back plate that mates up to the cooling hose behind the rotor would be the toughest to fabricate. So I figured I would do the toughest part first and if it turns out to be a complete disaster I would then just simply fall back on the block off plates and the 993 deflectors

so...i gathered up some material

1. an 18" exhaust tube 2.5" OD from Advance Autoparts ~$8
2. some sheet metal sourced from an older DELL Server - free
3. 2'x2' peice of 3/4 inch plywood leftover from some other outdoor project

I just happen to have some parts laying around in storage that included front struts from a 72 along with the A-arms. So I dug the driverside strut out and pulled it all apart to use as my test bed for all this. the dust shield was ok but real rusty as was everything else.


I used this dust shield to rough out a peice of the DELL sheet metal by simply bolting them together and drilling holes in the existing holes and dremeling out the middle. Then I cut a circle out that had about 19cm diameter which was just a bit larger than the inside of the rotor. then i fiddled around with it until it layed flat on the back area.




so...then i used my jig saw to cut a circle out of the plywood about as big around as the inside of the rotor. I measured about 17cm but im sure thats not right on the money.


so then I clamped the metal to the round plywood jig and drilled some holes. then I bolted the metal plate to the wooden jig.



so....then I took my cut off wheel and put some relief cuts about every 2 or three inches apart all the way around and hammered the edges down onto the wood. This was followed by some quick tack welding to the edges. after the shaping of the edges i re-mounted to check it out.


in hindsight, i should have done the relief cuts about every inch. you can see the variance in the photo.

the next step was to reshape the end of the exhaust tubing and weld onto the plate. I forgot to take a pic here but I cut the pipe at a triangle. Flatened the triangle and recut. then I just welded it alltogether. Ill take a pic next time.

in any event, I welded the exhaust tubing to the back and ground out the hole from the bottom with a dremel. Here is the final product:






My next step is to make the intermediate piece that bolts onto the A-arm. I was planning on using the leftover exhaust tubing for that. Ill probably have to buy another one of those for the passenger side. so far Im out 8 bucks.

[Kemo]

and here are the other two pics i have...i found out the hard way that you can only have 10 pics per post!

[whiskyb]

Nice work

[RWebb]

nice

and don't worry about the likelihood that you could have achieved all needed cooling with just the 993 deflectors, because:

1. they can break
2. busy hand are happy hands
3. it's a Pooschey - overkill is required

now that you have a model made out of steel, I know you will want to glom onto some sheet Ti and make the real ones...

[Jaskas]

I hope you dont mind if I ripp off your thread.

I made also a DIY-brakecooling application to my -87:

After complex computersimulation I came up with the final solution.
And after final touches and fine tuning in the windtunnel, the result was that it gives about 12% brakecooling and 8,5% better downforce in the front end

[Kemo]

Jaskas,
no sweat on the hijack...its all about the DIY!

RWebb,
i dont even have a clue where to buy Ti sheet metal much less weld it! that would certainly push me out of my budget for sure (which is pretty low these days )

whiskyb,
thanks for the kudo - hellb

Ill try to find the time to make the A-arm intermediate tube tonight or tomorrow. Ill also dig around for some really thin metal for the blockoff plate. I have some metal left over from a roofing project that might do the trick.