Rainy day here.... I have been thinking about two minor issues, added brake cooling and under hood air pressure so naturally I started thinking about combining them...

I am thinking it might be beneficial to have front brake cooling ducts start from behind the rad to direct some of the air that passes through the rad to the front rotors. Now this air will be a little warmer then conventional brake ducts but it should be well south of 150 degrees and still much cooler than the brakes under load. The warm air may also provide some benefits when the brakes are cold...

The rad will cut down on debris. The ducts could bypass the main rad fan(s). So they are only under pressure when there is forward motion. As noted they will provide a path for some minor under hood pressure relief.

They need to be well forward of the engine (maybe tight against the rad) so they are not pulling hot air over the exhaust. Also to prevent some major engine failure from coating the brakes with oil.

My car is carbed so cai is from the headlight pockets, so there is no issue here with engine failure through the intake.

Added benefit is they will be hidden, no ***** looking NACA ducts....

So what am I missing, why isn't this being done?

 

The only way I see this doing anything in the way of relieving pressure under the hood is simply by slightly decreasing the amount of air that is allowed to enter under the hood. as far as why more people don't do this I can only guess is simply because in a race application they want as much, as cool air as possible getting to the brakes.

 

In theory, that is one way to lower under hood air pressure. However GM did not make even a feeble attempt to combat that problem with the cooling system airflow design. You can cut down on the air, but a lot of times it doesn't allow enough air through the radiator for cooling.

The best way to bleed off excess under hood pressure (without a cooling airflow redesign) is to put some vents into the hood at positions allowing the air flowing over the hood to create a vacuum and suck the hot air out of the engine compartment.

 

Are you having a problem with under hood pressure? While perhaps not ideal, I find my Camaro to have excellent manners at insane speeds. Better even than my dads C6 Z51 and worlds better than my DD.

 

Ill try and find some pictures of the ducts we build for some of the Cup teams. Its basically a shell that fits over the caliper and bolts to the spindle with either two or three tubes sticking out for your flexible ducting to connect to.


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Here are those pictures I was talking about. We build duct that completely covers the caliper, but the one shown is carbon fiber (couldnt find a pic of the all aluminum duct). Then the exposed rotor is covered on the back side to direct some of that air at the rotor.