Roo Brake ducts install pics

Some install pics and details on my Roo Duct brake ducts for those of you who may be thinking about getting some. They can be found here: http://rooducts.com/

 

My '05 GT wagon is a full time track car now with limited daily driving. Its been challenging on the brakes thus far. The front and back straights here in Portland are long and complete murder on brakes. Currently running Wilwood calipers on the stock rotors with Cobalt XR2's, (love them). Instead of throwing down big dollars for a BBK I thought I would try these first.

 

The Roo Ducts look to be 3D printer built and feel pretty stout. I had a few concerns on fitment but contacted Randy Zimmer, (owner) and he assured me that they had been test fitted on the Legacy platform as well. Fit was quite good and install was straightforward. The inlet coming from the front of the car is ovalized and about 4". After making its way along the frame and turning 90 degrees to face the brake assembly, it necks down to a about 3". It looks like he really did his homework on the design, they nest exactly where they need to be without interfering with the suspension and still keep a good potential for flow. These could be routed all the way to backside of the rotor itself like many other systems but I opted to keep is simple for now. He's found factual, measurable results using this method and runs them this way on his rally team cars.

 

After pulling the fog light assembly and surrounds, I discovered that the opening is quite large and should be able to accept something pretty sizable. I did consider keeping the fog light surrounds but they're barely 3" and I really wanted 4" for maximized flow so I opted to keep them off. It was pretty obvious from the get go that I'd have to lose the window washer reservoir on the drivers side to make this happen. Not really worried about it as its pretty much a track car at this point.

 

After pulling the belly pan off and popping out the front half of the wheel well surrounds it was easy to use the supplied drill bit, tap, and screws to attach the ducts. Nice touch that these all came with the kit so I didn't have to search around or run back to the parts store.

 

Once these were in, the biggest challenge was finding a way to connect my hose to the back of the foglight ports. I figured that I might as well see what Home Depot had to offer and got lucky! A 4" downspout converter fits just about perfectly into the backside of the port. I trimmed about an inch off the rectangle opening to shorten the depth and cut a notch out on the top so it would nest properly as there is a section on the port that has a step down.

 

A couple of stainless bolts, one centered on the bottom and one on top and they were in and snug. It took about 10" of brake duct hose to connect the Roo ducts and the backside of the fog light port. Didn't feel the need to for hose clamps the fit was plenty snug and zip ties appear to hold it fine.

 

The belly pan needed to be cut out a bit to route everything but it was soft and easy to trim with tin snips and a razor blade. Both left and right side belly pan pieces, (not the big center piece), go all the way up into the front of the wheel wells and you can still keep these as well, with some trimming . It actually wraps over the Roo Ducts quite nicely to provide some extra protection.

 

Pics...

I really enjoy that it's a full time track car being a wagon with a roof rack

Yup, it pained me to pull the Thule racks off when I stopped daily driving it because it made the car look so sedate and helped with the sleeper look. Nothing better than passing BMW's and Porsches in a wagon with a roof rack! Cats out of the bag now though. Roof rack gone, interior ripped out, etc.

When my car is paid off I am hopefully doing the same although a sedan is not as low key as the wagon. What did the ducting cost is you don't mind me asking I didn't see prices on the website.

Its been a few months since I bought them, think they were about $180 or so?

I hate to seem like a sceptic, but isn't this only half of the solution? I get that these ducts solve the problem of gathering air from the front of the car, but directing the air to where it will have a cooling effect is also important. Attaching the duct hose to the suspension so that air is aimed at the backing plate is better than nothing. But, ideally, there should be a bracket that attaches the hose so that it directs air through a hole in the backing plate and onto the rotor itself. No?

I hate to seem like a sceptic, but isn't this only half of the solution? I get that these ducts solve the problem of gathering air from the front of the car, but directing the air to where it will have a cooling effect is also important. Attaching the duct hose to the suspension so that air is aimed at the backing plate is better than nothing. But, ideally, there should be a bracket that attaches the hose so that it directs air through a hole in the backing plate and onto the rotor itself. No?

 

Is there one available for our cars? The WRX ones are not compatible..

Hey FP. totally agree with you its half the answer for sure. That was my first question when I spoke to Randy about it before buying them. I was surprised that he wasn't running a complete closed system like everyone else. My backing plates, (aka dust shields) have long since been taken off and that would be the best point of connection. Can't remember the exact numbers but he was finding about a 300 ish degree difference between running them like this and not running anything at all. I've got once more day before the season ends, we'll see how they do

 

a full kit is a bit of a unicorn as far as I can tell. I don't think it would be too big a deal to modify the stock dust shields to work. I would be trying that if I still had mine on LOL. 3" hose could be snaked around to the back of the shield although a bit trickier than RWD cars as there is more to clear but its certainly been done.

 

I'll keep everyone posted on my findings. Guess I need to go get a laser thermometer huh??

I do remember a thread about some company that was prototyping caliper brackets that looked pretty good. Can't find the thread, but I'm guessing they never made it into production. Good that the backing plates are off, and that you have actual data showing results.

Hi guys, sorry to take so long.

I just went to the PRI show and in talking to other brake people, NOT attaching the air to the hub is probably better for most users.

Testing the hose shows the smallest kink to absolutely kill flow through it compared to a perfectly straight run.

Just pushing the hose with a finger makes the manometer drop significantly and that's a small change compared to twisting and turning to get to the hub.

A backup of pressure helps stack air at the fog light and redirect the air around the car rather than forcing it into the opening.

Gotcha. The thing is, why do I always see other guys running complete closed systems all the way to the backing plate? Many of the E30 and E36 BMW guys are running this at the track and they all have theirs running all the way. I don't know enough about the details of air flow dynamics to make an informed opinion on it so I just try to look to folks in the know As a side note, got two days on the track with these installed before the season ended. Never got a chance to actually measure temps compared to before but I can tell you that my discs, (stock size with Wilwood 4 pot calipers) were considerably less heat checked than before. That means they are providing some benefit

re: BMW. They have narrow frames and no CVs and axles so there's lots of room for the hoses so its easy to copy what Ford did in 1965. Difference is that Ford had a wind tunnel and graphed all the drag and flow in the ducting.

Because of the stigma, I hate to suggest this group pay attention to NASCAR but; they have the biggest budgets in NA (hiring many F1 engineers), have 40 pretty competitive cars every one of 40 weeks, and all those cars see the same condition over one hundred times a race. That's a lot of data! Believe me here, they don't do what Ford did in '65. The last couple years have brought a lot of changes in what they do. The latest thinking is fans, fans and fans and cooling calipers first.

Running the hose to the eye is conventional thinking and AP suggests it in their literature. I started thinking about it when I got reports back from people unhappy with the results of using RooDucts and they all were using secondary hoses.

Personally, we don't use a hose and have had great results at all but one track. It has a lot of 3rd gear straights and 90s or 180s at the end of each one. We added fans to get more flow at slow speeds and there is no pad wear. The AP brakes last the whole tank instead of 4 laps.

the racewagon uses 4" brake cooling hoses to a duct welded on the backing plate. Gator reported substantially cooler brakes as well as improved bearing life