Brake cooling/ducting

[Brian Bohannon]

I have a Class I Club Race 914. I'm cracking 100 dollar break pads like there is no tomorrow. My shop says extreme heat. I ahve the 916 front bumber with holes for brake ducts. No one makes a kit for brake ducts on the 914 that I have seen. Any ideas? Thought about making some out of brake backing plate? Tired of replacing good pads!

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

I'm going to assume you have solid (stock) rotors. If you have vented ones, then just shove the air straight into the middle of them. "Cool-brake" does those.

Cars with solid rotors require a different set of ducting.

I know that the older EP racers have something like that. It's kinda scary, actually--you practically can't see the rotor! They wrap a piece of sheetmetal all the way around the rotor up to the caliper. Cool air gets ducted in there from the front of the car. They need some kind of splitter inside the air inlet so that air goes to both sides. That's probably the tricky part.

Hmm. Hopefully he won't be upset at me for this, but you might give Darren at Pelican a call. He said that he picked up a pair of these at a swap meet a while back. If you wave enough money at him, he might just sell them...

You might also be able to fake something up. Make sure to put a splitter in to get air to both sides of the rotor! Or you might simply consider running a dryer hose straight to the caliper. It won't help as much, but it might help enough. Again, make sure that air gets to both sides.

Good luck!

--DD