Are they necessary for brake cooling or will the brakes run cooler without them?
Namely on the rear of the P71. It's going to be a Lemons car and these are known for eating rear brakes. I'm having to rebuild the rear passenger side and am considering leaving the dust shield and parking brake assembly off and rigging up cooling ducts instead. By my way of thinking, the more the disk is exposed to air the cooler it runs.
Ditch them and rig up a cooling duct.
Are the brake shields acting as heat shields to protect something else?
As an example, in a fwd car, do the front brake shields also serves as heat shields to keep the CV boots from getting too hot?
John Welsh said:Are the brake shields acting as heat shields to protect something else?
As an example, in a fwd car, do the front brake shields also serves as heat shields to keep the CV boots from getting too hot?
In that case it's usually to protect the LBJ or OTRE.
The only thing that could get hot back there is the shock and it's several inches from the rotor. Its a stick axle so no axle boots or ball joints to worry about.
Toyman01 said:The only thing that could get hot back there is the shock and it's several inches from the rotor. Its a stick axle so no axle boots or ball joints to worry about.
You'll be fine without them
I took them off the front of my RX8 and it helped the brakes run cooler. I probably should have trimmed them instead to keep some heat shielding over the ball joints and tie rod ends.
Mine rotted off the SS about 10 years ago. No adverse effects.
I keep them on the VW golf that doesn't see track duty (I remove then on track days). They keep the back side of the rotor away from rain splash which promote rotor delamination by rust flaking and then pad damage. I was able to run a set of rotors for 15 years until it got too thin.
On my cars that came without a backing plate, rotors and pads need replacement about every 5 years due to this damage.
If the plates have big enough flats, drill a hole, rivet on a flange and clamp your cooling duct to it. Not as good as the properly molded carbon fiber plates, but a hell of a lot cheaper.
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