Posted by In addition to swapping the original master cylinder for the uprated version from an E46 M3 (you can read the blog post here) the other area of the brakes I knew needed attention is the cooling. On longer circuits the brakes have a bit of time to recover between heavy stops but at a short circuit like Brands Hatch Indy there isn’t time for the temperature to drop, even with racing fluid I managed to boil the system over on a moderately hot day. Although the later cars have got some ducting to cool the brakes the R53 has no direct cooling at all.
The cheapest and simplest way of improving the brake cooling is to remove the front fog laps and then remove or cut the wheel arch liners. Although this would improve matters over the stock arrangement I wanted a solution that directed the air to the brakes. A number of motorsport suppliers sell universal brake ducts and hoses which can be plumbed into a modified brake backing plate I decided to avoid that area of the car as it’s very congested. The solution I finally chose was a set of GRP brake ducts from Orranje. Orranje’s products are superb quality, well priced and they offer excellent customer service a winning combination!
Fitting the brake ducts is relatively simple but does require taking a hack saw to the fog light mounts, wheel arch liner and bumper crash bar.
The photo above shows the small cut required in the bumper bar and the much larger section removed from the fog light mount, the fog light could still be reinstated and used if I wanted to (the wiring is tie wrapped out of the way).
A trial fitting of the duct, once the position had been worked out the duct was held in place with two small aluminium brackets using 2 of the 3 fog light mounting screws.
Once in place the duct directs air straight to the brake caliper.
With the front bumper back on the install is very neat!