My car is a daily and I'm trying to do more track days with it. I've always had issues managing the heat in the brakes so I'm looking at adding brake ducts. Are there any downsides to running something like the sneed4speed's bracket instead of the stock brake dust shields?

sneed 4 speed

The other options I'm looking at are closer to the stock dust shields but have a hole in them to attach the hose and direct air to the brakes.


I suppose I could go with the sneed brackets and then swap between the two for track days, but I'd like to avoid that if possible. Though I'm considering it because the sneed brackets are $100 cheaper than the others.

 

You will get more brake dust on the suspension components. Also if you drive in the rain you will get more water on the rotors. That is about it. I have been driving my BMW 2002 without them for about 20 years and have not noticed anything bad. If you are running on the track a lot it is best to leave them off and run the cooling ducts anyway. On the race cars we run just cooling ducts, no shields.

 

These will be a better option than the open brackets. These will funnel the air towards the surface and the center of the rotor better than just a bracket.
The best method is to channel the fresh air thru the center of the rotor and out thru the vanes, instead of just pointing it at the surface where it does very little, albeit better than nothing)

But, to your overall question, there's no detrimental effect by removing the dust shields, other than, as you can guess, more dust and a bit more heat being transmitted to the suspension bits (ie. ball joints, axles, etc)

 

I tried ducts like both of those on my track car and could not get the airflow I needed, mostly because of the axles and routing required. Airflow meter confirmed flow was bad

I have much better results just running the ducts to the subframe and pointing them at the rotors/calipers. I measure with brake rotor color changing paint. Addtional bonus I get another weekned of life out of my pads now that I have better cooling

 

I'm guessing you had the ducts running to the bumper? I'm planning on running scoops below the control arms to collect air and then run the hose from there up to the brakes.

 

i looked into that, but to get it to work they would drag on the ground my car is too low and it's a low pressure air area due to the splitter. I also tried porsche control arm air deflectors but could not fit them due to the axle and space constraints

 

I don't have fogs on my car and the bumper is cracked so I didn't care that much about drilling some holes in it for the brackets. Even widened the holes so they matched the brackets better.




I have ducts running around to reach the Sneed Speed brackets on the knuckles, but I'm not a fan of it on the engine side... I plan on re-doing it a bit like what Lexus do, which is to have a solid duct aimed at the inside of the wheel. I have doubts that it's doing much with that long of tubes and the turns anyway.