Brake cooling

[claymore]

Having had issues with my brakes overheating at a recent track day (I already have larger disks than standard), I'm thinking about water cooling, anyone done this?

[composimmonite]

Before you try water cooling what about some ducting to force air over the brakes ? Could be a simpler solution.

Paul H

[alolympic]

^^^^ Agrred.
Force more air over them, and if possible,give the air a better chance of escape too.

[claymore]

Jun 24, 2012 8:39:31 GMT composimmonite said:

Before you try water cooling what about some ducting to force air over the brakes ? Could be a simpler solution.

Paul H

Yep, already done that

[crogthomas]

Got a similar problem at the moment with my Volvo (940). Cracked discs and melted pads at the last trackday.

The trouble with water cooling is that you have to carry extra weight as water, which makes the brakes work harder. Not ideal. Racing trucks use water cooling if you want to look for ideas, but look at the rest of the system first.
What exactly is overheating?
Presumably you're using 302mm discs, got good pads, DOT 5.1 fluid etc?

[claymore]

Yep, 302's, dot 5.1 and mintex pads, I also thought about co2 cooling as I have everything at hand.

[rutts]

AP do a six pot caliper that has water flowing through it to cool caliper and fluid.
only other thing as said is blow co2 into air ducting to discs.

[pauly22]

could always get a couple of washer bottles from scrap cars, and before heavy braking, spray them with water

[claymore]

Jun 24, 2012 14:20:59 GMT pauly22 said:

could always get a couple of washer bottles from scrap cars, and before heavy braking, spray them with water

I thought it could be triggered by the brake light switch.

[bl1300]

What about adjusting the ducting so it has a larger intake. More air = more cooling.

What wheels are you running? If you go for something with widely spaced spokes you'll get better brake cooling.

[jrevillug]

Just out of interest, pad or fluid overheating? (pad = solid pedal, fluid = soft pedal.) If pad might be worth going for race material pads for track use, swapping to stock pads on the road.

[ChasR]

I was going to say, try some fast road pads . Beware that a number of DOT 4 fluids are proven to have higher boiling points than 5.1 (Motul 600 being one example). I am not too sure about ATE Super Blue, but for previous trackdays for the 205 the pads (stock Delphi items before I went over to Mintex 1144s) gave up long before the fluid did (it still has a solid pedal and brakes well after the pads and discs were swapped .

[Deleted]

How have you directed the air flow to the brakes, you need to get the cool air to the center of the disc so it then travels through the vents and out of the outside of the disc, then also duct to the caliper itself to cool that.
Your problem is that the wieght of the vehicle is high to the size of the brake system and the speed you are travelling isn't sufficient to get a volume of air to pass over the brakes to take away the heat generated

[popuptoaster]

different wheels will also transfer heat away from the brakes at different rates depending on what they are made of and the design of them.