Custom Brake Cooling Ducts

Chevy Camaro Custom Brake Cooling Ducts

Description: Install Custom Race Style Front Brake Cooling Ducts Required Tools and Materials

A necessary modification for enthusiasts looking to take their late model Camaro to the track. These instructions guide you through the process of installing custom made brake cooling ducts. These will greatly increase the performance of your brakes and also give you longer brake pad life and less brake dust. Please keep in mind you can choose to install your ducts in a different location than in our install. You do not need to go through all the detail to get good performance results. Another common place to insert the ducts is into the fog light area. Installation Instructions Main Components for Brake Duct Installation: Why the need for brake ducts? If you've ever lapped a roadcourse with the puny LT1 single piston front brakes, you know they become "less than adequate" quite quickly after repeated use at high speed. The single most cost-effective way to make the brakes last longer before fading and to increase pad and rotor life is ducting air to the rotors to try and keep them cool. That's why nearly everybody I know that regularly takes their car to roadcourses has some sort of brake ducting. I was originally planning to install simple "bumper ducts" in the airdam as many others have done. Then one day it struck me--with all the really steep driveways where I live (including the one to my apartment complex), I scrape my airdam on the ground on a daily basis. I figured if ducts were mounted to the airdam, they wouldn't be long for this world. Even if I didn't beat the hell out of them to the point of damage on a daily basis, every time I pulled up a steep driveway I would be worried about them. That wasn't something I wanted to live with in my daily driver--I didn't want to worry about the things every day. I wanted to place them up in the air and out of the way. Some sort of "permanent" solution that I could simply forget about after installation. Then one day, when walking by a '98 Camaro, I noticed how its foglight location would be an absolutely perfect place to take in air for the brakes. I started thinking about how I could do something similar on my car...and this is what I came up with. Here's How We Did It: I bought the NACA Ducts and Stainless Wire Mesh from BSR. The ducts are the 2 1/2" clear ones (Part # BSR.001.WCS) and were about $20 each. I decided to go with the 2 1/2" ducts instead of the 3" ducts for a couple reasons. First, the 3" ducts are huge. I wasn't so sure I wanted to cut holes quite that big in the front of the car (although there is plenty of room). Second, I wasn't sure I'd have enough room to run 3" tubing the way I wanted--all the way to the rotor--without it rubbing on everything. Now that I've done it, I'd say it might be possible with 3" tubing but I wouldn't guarantee it. My 2 1/2" tubing comes very close to rubbing the tires at full steering lock. That was another requirement for me--the car is a daily driver and must be able to maneuver in and out of tight parking spaces. I really didn't want to have to worry about rubbing the ducting off every time I parked the car. Anyway, I figured the difference in airflow would be more than made up for if it allowed me to get that air into the center of the rotor. The stainless wire mesh is the eight squares per inch (Part # AGS.1.8X36) and was $10 for three square feet (way more than I needed). It's high quality stuff--very strong and stiff (it will hold a shape). Although it probably impedes airflow slightly, I did not like the idea of directing large rocks traveling 100 MPH into the centers of my rotors. ------------------------------------------------------ The first thing to do was paint the ducts. Since I have absolutely no paint/bodywork experience, I doubted I'd be able to put a nice, smooth, durable finish on the ducts without spending way more time and effort than I wanted to. So, I took the easy way out--since the ducts were clear, I painted the back sides with a can of spray paint from Pep Boys. It actually turned out pretty well. After about 3 coats, the front sides of the ducts had a nice, smooth, shiny finish with a very durable "plastic clear coat." The main problem with this is after you touch up the edges of the ducts on the car you can see the touch up paint and the duct paint are on slightly different levels. It's only noticeable if you look really closely though. If you have paint/body experience (or a lot of patience) you should have no trouble making them look better than mine by "doing it the right way"--installing the ducts onto the car, getting everything filled and sanded smooth and spraying them from the outside the same way you would if you were painting the fender. One of these days when I have the time and patience I'll "do it right." ------------------------------------------------------ Then I installed the screen to the ducts. I formed the screen on the end of a piece of 2 1/2" exhaust pipe, cutting little triangles so the edge didn't try to fold. I used a large tin snips to cut the screen. I put down a layer of electrical tape on the ducts to keep the screen from scratching the ducts, put on the screens and then put on another layer to temporarily hold the screens in place. This is where I mounted the ducts: Once you remove the lower panels you'll see there is a whole lot of empty space behind the bumper cover at this location. On the driver's side, the airbox (and most CAI systems) protrudes into this area but there is plenty of room left over. On the passenger's side, there are a few "gizmos" in the area but there is still plenty of room to snake the tubing from the duct to the back of the panel. These are the panels I'm talking about, with the holes for the tubing cut into them (ignore the reflections, it was raining): If I had to do it over again, I'd probably mount the ducts a little farther forward so the tubing didn't have to make such a sharp bend to avoid the inner fender. If you go too far forward, the bumper cover becomes "less flat" and that will make it difficult to mount the duct. Also, be sure to try and make the ducts level with the ground or they'll look funny and won't flow well. To make templates to aid with cutting the car, I made a copy of each duct (yes, on a copy machine), cut out the shapes of the openings, pasted them onto thin cardboard and cut the shapes out from the cardboard. With loops of masking tape, I stuck the templates to the side of the car and traced around them with a water-soluble marker. I cut the bumper cover with a Dremel tool. I cut most of the area out (staying well inside the lines) with a high speed cutting bit (steel, thin, kind of looks like a drill bit). After that I used a sanding bit to shape the hole toward the lines, staying a little more than 1/8" inside the lines all the way around. Once you get that close you'll need to place the duct behind the hole and gradually take the hole up to size to match the duct (so that the edges of the hole are even with the side walls of the duct).