Brake ducts
Brake ducts Building a car that will mostly be a street driven car but will see some street/strip use and the ocassional autocross event(of course with different wheels and suspension set up differently). I will be running a brake cooling setup in the front and I was wondering would the rear benefit at all from that as well? I know the fronts do most of the work and most people tend to not modify the rear brake setups aside from rotors and hawk pads. Eventually I do plan on tracking the car as well on but that probably a bit later. Was my first car and I've spent the last few years completely rebuilding this car and stock piling parts lol. Will do a build thread once it's road worthy.
No. You will need a seriously fast track-only car before you need to worry about rear brake temps, or even front ones for that matter. At AX you'll never get enough speed or heat to worry about fade from heat. I had a duct setup for a few track days but took it off. My TA only goes to autocross and country road driving, and ducts did not do anything. Except make me worry about smashing the hoses etc.
Douchebag On The Tree
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 1,268
Likes: 4
From: Indianapolis, IN
At best it will do nothing at all. At worst it will kill your rotors and/or give you lift at high speeds.
Cars that have brake cooling ducts are specifically designed (as are the OEM parts) to perform well with the ducts. Even then I don't think high performance cars really do it anymore. Instead they force air around the wheel well itself to reduce drag and rely on higher quality components to handle the heat of high performance driving.
There have been people that have done this exact thing and have noticed that their rotors don't like it at all, cracking from the temperature differences. You're much better off getting rotors that handle and dissipate the heat more effectively than trying to rapidly cool off your stock rotors.
Start by flushing your fluid regularly. This will take care of any moisture in the system and you can upgrade to a better fluid as well. That will be more than enough for a street driven car that occasionally sees auto cross.
If you start doing some actual track days and you notice it's not longer enough, consider doing the CTS-V upgrade. The larger in diameter and thicker rotors will handle more heat from the extra mass. That will be enough for anything ouside of a full race car.
No matter what, just leave your rears alone. Quality OEM pads and rotors and you're golden. They don't do much at all and increasing their performance leads to horrible braking balance with a tendency for the rears to lock up before the front.
Cars that have brake cooling ducts are specifically designed (as are the OEM parts) to perform well with the ducts. Even then I don't think high performance cars really do it anymore. Instead they force air around the wheel well itself to reduce drag and rely on higher quality components to handle the heat of high performance driving.
There have been people that have done this exact thing and have noticed that their rotors don't like it at all, cracking from the temperature differences. You're much better off getting rotors that handle and dissipate the heat more effectively than trying to rapidly cool off your stock rotors.
Start by flushing your fluid regularly. This will take care of any moisture in the system and you can upgrade to a better fluid as well. That will be more than enough for a street driven car that occasionally sees auto cross.
If you start doing some actual track days and you notice it's not longer enough, consider doing the CTS-V upgrade. The larger in diameter and thicker rotors will handle more heat from the extra mass. That will be enough for anything ouside of a full race car.
No matter what, just leave your rears alone. Quality OEM pads and rotors and you're golden. They don't do much at all and increasing their performance leads to horrible braking balance with a tendency for the rears to lock up before the front.
