Brake Air Vents?

[Condor1970]

OK, this may be a stupid question, but I just watched a YouTube video of a guy tearing the whole front of his car apart to add the RTR front brake air vents/ducts. The interesting thing about it, is the front bumper cover has the duct work built in for a pathway to allow air to travel into the wheel well area. So, my question is simple.

Why not just drill out the holes in the stock plastic air vent cover? Is this somehow a really bad idea? It does seem like the air flow won't do all that much to cool the brakes, but maybe with excessive air flow on the outside of the wheel, then it creates some differential pressure that cause more air to flow through the wheel spokes from the inside of the wheel somehow. But again, instead of tearing apart the whole front of the car, why not just drill out the holes in the existing stock plastic vent cover?

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[slink]

I have to agree with you. Why spend $200 on this when you can just drill out the existing vent cover ????

 

[nameuser]

I'm thinking his car is not a PP2 car. The wheels are but he doesn't have the chin splitter and I'm not sure that's the PP2 strut tower brace. I'm guessing that actually PP2 cars have that area open to the ducting. I'm very curious about this. I'll check my PP2 in the morning and see if this is open or not and I'll take pics and respond back.

 

[Condor1970]

Aerodynamically, I guess the position of that vent will shoot a stream of air around the outside of the tire/rim. This faster moving air will cause a pressure differential to the air inside the rim drawing air from inside and under the car through the wheel and out, thus cooling the brakes. By drawing air from under the car, I suppose technically it would also lower the pressure under the car slightly to help with down force. I wouldn't think it's a massive change, but it may decrease the brake pad temps by a couple degrees.

 

[nameuser]

Well, unfortunately, I was wrong. My PP2 has the same blocked off solid piece in front of the ducting. I'm going to have the front clip off to install the upper grill which i opened up via palm sander to allow flow to the Vellossa tech snorkels which also are getting installed. I think I'll just remove the solid honeycomb area with my dremel, sand the edges and call it good.

 

[Michelle5150]

Don't know if this adds to the mystery or not, but the vent on my '19 EB premium is open.

 

[1 old racer]

interesting, very interesting?

 

[nameuser]

I wonder what the part number is for these? If they're cheap enough I wouldn't mind experimenting on opening them up. I'm guessing the RTR set is ~$200?

 

[ihasnostang]

can confirm, looked at 4 '19 mustangs today and the only one that didnt have those was the GT PP1 , all the ecoboosts had them

 

[Condor1970]

Well, I can confirm that my car does have them open. 2018 GT base model w/MT-82.

 

[aerok]

Hi everyone, I read somewhere the reason behind it.
Can't recall where i read it, but I do recall the answer

For Non- Performance pack cars (like my 18MY Premium) makes sense to have ducts open as the factory wheels are 8ish inch width and the ducts direct air right to the outside edge of the wheels improving by certain amount the front end aero (makes the front slippery by a tiny amount, fuel economy, drag etc. will improve)

For PP1/PP2 cars, they use wider front wheels with 9 or 10.5 inches respectably from the factory. So if the duct is open the air will actually hit the rubber (not the outside edge of the wheel). By having closed window, the air will have to go around the fascia improving aero for that particular setup. Note, that the PP2 cars have a small air deflector at the edge of the lower splitter acting as a vortex generator creating a pressure that sucks the air from the wheel well, in other words, is trying to suck as much turbulent air as possible, the amount of improvement will be negligible for any user, but not negligible for EPA rating.

These outside vents are not even close to help with braking cooling performance.
PP1/PP2/Mach1 have a dedicated brake ducts cooling feature within the Lower air deflector at the inside portion of the wheel/tyre assembly.

This lower air deflector can be retrofitted to a Non-Performance cars BTW. found this picture in Cj Ponyparts web site and they have an explanation on how can be done.

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