continued from above
No rocket science here, just careful measuring, some experience, and good craftsmanship. The main thing to remember is you want to get as much of the duct aimed
below the rotor face. Blowing air directly
at the rotor face doesn't do much cooling - but ducting air
inside the rotor hat cools the front wheel hub and allows the vented brake rotor to act as a centrifugal air pump, which pulls the air
through the rotor from the inside out. Even without ducted air the rotor will do this on its own
to a small extent, but high pressure air forced inside the rotor makes for a HUGE bump in brake cooling efficiency.
Along with the brake duct hose some November work is shown in the image above. I will talk about what's coming up in the final paragraph of this update.
SPLITTER MOUNT FABRICATION
All of the factory front structure is gone, from the radiator support to the inner fender unibody structure. There are critical items that need a solid piece to be hung from at the very front - like the splitter, which can put 200-300 pounds of aero load through the small struts that mount at the leading edge of the the lower splitter plane. There are also other pieces that need some mounting structure at the front of the engine bay, like the radiator, coolers, headlights, front bumper, and more.
The exterior "bumper" is an aluminum OEM reproduction unit, mostly added for styling (it covers several seams between OEM panels). Underneath this black aluminum bumper is the real structure added, by way of a 1.0" diameter DOM tube. This piece of tubing is bent to follow the contours of the OEM front bumper and then many things were tied onto this structure.
Reproduction OEM headlight buckets were mounted at the bottom using custom brackets welded to this 1" front structural tube. There are also splitter support rod mounts that attach to this front tube, with brackets hidden behind the exterior of the black aluminum bumper.
More things were then added to this bumper, like structure to mount the various heat exchangers, which we will talk about next time.
WHAT'S NEXT?
That's it for the October work, but there was a lot accomplished in November which I will show next time. This includes finishing the steering shaft, power steering and oil cooler mounting, front anti-roll bar "splined arm" and end link fabrication, fitting the front body panels better to finalize some mounts, a big discussion of hood and duct choices (including flat hood vs using the existing aluminum cowl hood), making a new front steering arm that bolts to the C6 spindles, then making new tie rods to finish the steering, planning out the wiper motors, making room for the driveshaft at the rear of the frame, as well as some exploratory work on hood hinges.
We will cover all that and more in my next update. Thanks for reading.
Cheers,