I've been following your posts for the past few months and I have to say it's highly informative. I have tons of notes for future projects from your 30+ pages. Thanks in advance. Anyway, just wanted to hear your thoughts on converting your fog lights to air ducts for your brakes? Going 100+ mph on the front and backstretch could give you some good air flow on the front brakes?

 

Back last year when I retrofitted the OE fog lights, I thought at the time inevitably they would have to be removed and the holes used for brake cooling intake ducts.

Over time I would grown to like the fog lights and I use them all the time as day time running lights, except in high hazard traffic situations which I would add the Xenon low beams.

I have paid attentions to those use the openings for brake duct and I am not sold they are that effective in most modest installations. Running the hoses with adequate diameter is very challenging in the wheelwells as there is barely enough space just to accommodate the turning of the wheels. To make it work one will need to hack up the bumper and wheel liners to install big funnels and I am not about to willing to do that.

The other thing is the cooling air is directed to the inside face of the rotor. While this will reduce the rotor temperature as a whole, it only increase the temperature gradient between the two opposite side. With most aftermarket BBK the inner dust shields are not used so there is already more cooling on the inside face.

I am not saying brake ducts are not effective. There are just a lot to think about for the best implementation given the constraints. May be a couple of cracked rotors in the near future will push me over the edge. Until then Desire will maintain the understated appearance as a polite little runabout.

 

The rotors will crack with ducts too, only thing the ducts have given me is a lot better pad life, probably double pad life compared to pre-duct. I cut the fogs out, and then further cut out some of the bumper support to fit some big ducts

 

these manhole size funnels are what one need to do them right; also kiss the fender liners goodbye


Funny that you mention the pad life. My thought is to direct the air to the caliper and pads from above, but that may mainly reduce the leading side of the pads.

 

At least the R53 has room to put hose of any size through the wheelwell unlike the R56.

The fog light openings are a popular way to get air for the brakes, but I have also heard others comment about not wanting to do this because they didn’t want to loose the fog lights. As for directing air away from the rotor face, you can easily fabricate a shield that has the brake duct air directed into the base of the rotor vanes and not on the face.

 

I put big ducts in, cut out the foglights and bumper support to make room. i started out with the duct going around to the rotor center but it's too long and too many bends there was no flow and no change to pad life or crazing/cracking. Now Its a short run that dumps right at the caliper/rotor on the front. Pad life damn near doubled, no change in rotor life/cracking/crazing. Inside/outside is same pad & rotor wear/crazing even though the air is mostly hitting the inside. I have pad taper but I flip them after each event inside/outside so in end it does not matter.

ignore the rear duct, I removed those they did not seem to help on temp, they had bilge room fans ran off a relay. With some exotic nascar fans they would probably be better at the cost of high amp draw

 

This is the slippery slope that I don't want Desire to slide down on.

 

as long as you are not experiencing fluid boil, the only benefit is longer service life IMO

 

It is the worst of timing to consider buying an aluminum trailer. Our original plan is to get one later this year. I should have foreseen this happening when the talk of import tariff of AL first occurred. The thing the one I want is in Ohio.

I just happen to check the current price again. The base price of the trailer jumped 20%. The manufacturer is passing the entire cost increase to the consumers. We are only begin to see the tip of the iceberg as the global trade war will escalate until there is no winners.

I have been reading up on trailer brakes, and it is amazing with the WWW how hard it is to find any useful information on how the electric brake works. I do not have to read anything to know the basic principles. My question is how does the design translate the magnetic force which is perpendicular to the vehicle travel vector into actuation force along the travel axis. I scoured the web for images as well as "how does trailer electric brake work" and every one just glosses over the most intriguing part of the design with some hand waving, and this including the article on wikipedia. Yes, any idiots can go contribute on wikipedia. I first suspected there is a ramp built into the backing plate that translate this force 90 degrees.

I dislike videos as unlike articles, you cannot speed read and decide if I should spend more time on it. Eventually after scoured hundreds of google images to no avail I succumbed to the search of a useful video. Again most are useless to answer my question, until one by this young man. Only if I can see one first hand, it would be immediately clear.

it works by the proportional drag induced by the magnetic force using the outer face of the steel drum; the magnet in turn pull the lever arm that rotate a cam to spread the two drum brake shoes; so it is a genius case of electromagnetic-mechanical amplifier design

The most impressive of the design is how it amplifiers the minute amount of current from the brake controller enough brake forces to stop a 5000 lb trailer.

As to the trailer, I will not pay 20% more because of US's shortsighted and ignorant action. There will be a lot of pain to go around in months to come if this trade war continues and escalates.

If you care to follow the tip of the iceberg steel and aluminium import tariff here is one good news article on the stampede to file and block exemption.

 

RMW had featured some brake ducts on his Facebook page a while back (2/7/18) and it looks like he has them pointing at wheel barring area as well as the rotor.

 

There is one recent post that brought about some shallow discussions of a vendor's bypass valve. I asserted that it should not increase boost as my logic and understanding would assert. OK, the argument is the modified BPV close tighter than the stock one that they modified, so that quashed the logical reasoning. The catch phrase is on some car the boost increase is up to 1 PSI, but some car none.

I really miss the days when NAM has some of the smartest, like the couple of contrarians in this old thread on BPV and VGS mod. What is most interesting is the increase in IAT which is something that I haven't thought about. Lastly, the butterfly of the BPV has a set screw. It is to set a slight gap rather than close tight. If you ever play with a carburetor butterfly you should notice it will stick if allowed to be close tight against the bore.

For me any modification that cripples one's ability to modulate the pedal, be it brake, or throttle is as bad as sin. And I specifically want to mention those in-line throttle modifier.

 

Last season at the track in the summer, I discovered that the battery got very hot. So hot that the acid expanded and with some seepage on the battery vent covers. The foam tool pocket was badly distorted as the foam got so hot that begins to melt. I blamed it on the factory exhaust being too restrictive for flat out driving. I would soon replaced it with a Miltek non-resonated catback. The result was much better.

In the last track event I checked the temperature of the battery compartment and found it still too hot to my liking, and that was a cool day. I have been wondering about the design of the heat shield under the battery box. It has always look odd to me but I didn't give it much thought until recently. It is designed not to keep the exhaust heat out! To the contrary, it is designed to keep some of the exhaust heat in to warm the battery for those in frigid winters. I am going to remove it since I am in the balmy PNW.

 

Instead of removing the keep-the-heat-in heat shield in the previous post, one can always uncover the battery compartment by removing the carpet to allow the heat to dissipate. It isn't an option for my dual duty street car named Desire however.


melted tool foam pouch - mini is a hothead ; the melted side faced the vertical surface of the battery box

 

why does duck cross the road? suicide by car?

 

Boy! Sometimes I thought to myself do we have first world problems. With a bit of taste of track running Desire wants to be carried to the track rather than driving there. Each time we go to the track and seeing what serious track rats has the more we want a trailer. Most of the road racing folks have enclosed trailers. Some serious HPDE folks have open trailers. It is that slippery slope again.

Like a 2-post lift an enclosed trailer is not viable unless we are willing to move - again. We have consider it seriously but the justifications are just not sufficient, so an open trailer it is. As our Sprinter based James Cook motorhome has a towing capacity of 5000 lb and tongue weight of 500 lb max we have to choose very carefully. A mistake would be very costly in time and money. Very quickly we decided that the Trailex 8045 is the one. It is most costly because of the well thought out design and light weight.

Taking a tally of the things that we would bring to the tracks and the max wet weights of the Mini and GT4 the trailer's ~900 lb weight is the reason we are willing to pay a premium. Additionally, it comes with a pair of long ramps which trailer buyers often overlook. We managed to negotiate a package deal that is very close to the pre-tariff pricing so we are committed. I know. In a few months when the nations come to their senses that trade war has no winners I might regret this, but it is all about risk management and hedging.

Next is to get the Sprinter motorhome provisioned with the trailer brake control. Just like anything else you can spend a lot on a fancy tailer brake controller. With a bit of research we tentatively chosen the Curt 51140 Triflex. It is an inertial controller that utilize solid state 3-axis accelerometer.

 

Living in the first world life can be very stressful especially having to make product choices. So many excellent competing products, so little time to research them all.

On the brake controller I initially thought the Curt 51140 Triflex is a good choice given its low street price for a proportional (inertial) controller. I do like the ability to manually apply only the trailer brake to stabilize the trailer should it starts to sway. Many controllers do not have this feature. Before long I decided to look up-market a bit and found the Tekonsha 90195 P3. The main difference is it can be mounted 360-degree, has a dot matrix display, and more important can continue to apply brake on the trailer when it senses the brake pedal is being depressed for more than 5 s, regardless if there is no acceleration/deceleration - like stop-holding on a steep grade.

Tekonsha 90195 P3


What I dislike about the Curt 51140 most is the sensibility and aggressiveness setting controls. One is a thumbwheel and the other a slider. It is a poor design as you would not know should they move from vibration, or being accidentally changed. The Tekonsha 90195 P3 does not have these shortcomings, but lacks the manual braking and costs a bit more due to the more polished UI. So it is a bit of buyer's dilemma.

too many choices can be a bad thing

In any event, I scored an Amazon's Warehouse deal of an opened box Tekonsha 90195 P3. Let's hope it comes with everything and not broken. It is better than stalking some truck forums to try to save a few bucks for a lightly used one.

Someone I met at the track told me Amazon has differential pricing depends on where you live. The prices tends to be lower if you live out in the middle of nowhere, especially in the heartland, or god forbids Detroit what used to be the motor city.

 

This is a very well viewed thread here on NAM and is a good example of why I approached Motoring Alliance and asked a very important question, "Can we both exist in the MINI Forum world without killing each other?" Now yes, the linked thread on the Detroit Tuned BPV is more than 10 years old. In that time some that posted have left this world for the big MINI parking lot in the sky, others have moved on from MINI while some left NAM for Motoring Alliance. Some are still over there at Motoring Alliance and have a wealth of knowledge about the car that I spend allot of time on.

OK, I am off the soap box and put the thread back in the hands of the Bronze Hammer man.

 

Thanks so much for making NAM a more relaxed place. All the Mini forums should coexist in peace and thieve. Minitorque suffered a massive data loss recently and from what I gather unable to recover countless threads. I don't know the cause, and suspect may be a victim of ransomeware.

I recently was curious as what became of DrPhiGandini so I did some internet forensics. He now has a Porsche GT4 and appears to be living happily after NAM.

 

Living yes, but I question happily as everybody here knows that a MINI comes before a Porsche. We will not hold it against him though.

 

The pair of pumps that I gifted Desire arrived. It took a bit of work to get it assembled, which are mostly hydraulic plumbing fittings. I happened to have a case of ATF laying around bought for the Sprinter transmission oil service which only need 8 qts, so works out perfect as the Quickjack needs 2.5 qts.

just by the appearance of the cardboard boxes there is no doubt all are made in China





there are like 10 fittings to be installed






my main criticism of the design is the fitting surfaces that utilize o-ring for sealing are cheesy; there is no recess for the o-r-ring so the o-ring is just crushed flat




I filled the pump with 2.3 qt while the instruction called for 2.5 qt; 2.3 qt was way too much and made a bloody (red) mess


this is the first time raising and they are jerky because there is air in the dydraulic

once the air is bled the motion is smooth

 

Time to put the Quickjack to the test with a live load.


the height is quite generous compared to jack stands




once it is raised you lower it slightly to let them sit on the built in support stops; you can then remove the hydraulic hoses like I did here


The truth is if I don't have the Porsche I probably would not buy this as it is quite a lot of work to move the 80lb things around. They are nice if you need a lot of clearance to work under.

 

Wow you ran those willwoods pretty hot. Did you have them glow or smoke? The quickjacks are pretty cool and if you dont have room for a full lift, its the next best thing and gets it high enough all around to do the bigger jobs.

I like your review.

 

I talked to a Miniac at the track and he has the same rose black colour. You cannot heat up the caliper recklessly without crash and burn at the track. OK. I managed to boiled Motul 600 and I kept driving. I just have to leave a fraction of second to pump the pedal. BTW, if Apple knows anything about their customers, the next hot iPhone colour should be rose black like my Wilwood calipers.

If you are sporting a set of Wilwood BBK, it is very easy to tell if you are just a poser by the colour of your black caliper. Rose black is a rite of passage that you do use your BBK. And what about red, you ask? Poser from day 1. Did I just make millions of enermies? To clarify, I am only referring to Wilwood BBK kits, which you can choose red or standard issued black calipers. For full disclosure, I am never a fan of anything flashy so no neon colour hoses in my vehicles.

 

Yes, this is what happens to the black Wilwoods. 3 sets of Wilwoods I have had, and the Wilwoods on 2 of my friend’s MINIs have done this. A neat thing for me is that the High Class Gray color on my current MINI has a touch of burgundy in it and the rose Wilwoods goes very nicely with it.

Hmmmm - I wonder at what temp the powder coating on those red calipers melts at? I know the yellow on the Porsche calipers can handle the heat, at least that is true for the GT3 RSR I have seen on the track.

Oh, and TCE sells the Wilwoods in almost any color you want, not just red. Just sayin’, if you are doin’ a show car.

 

Yes, you got them hot and in the rose black class . As far as red I was asking if you got the rotor to glow? Sometimes you can only see it at night on the track.