Front wheel well cover
 

I am slowly starting to make plans for the front bumper on my lupo 3l that I will make this summer in glass fiber.
In that process I was thinking about making front wheel well deflecter but then I saw aerocivics car and the total well covers.

Does this have an impact on brakes and other mechanics inside the well ?? Is it safe to do

If you make the covers could you address the possible heat issue with some air tubes from the front bumper leading the air into the well ??

heat
 

*The leakage of air between the tire and wheel well should be sufficient to carry the heat rejected from the brakes under 'normal' stopping.
*The brake rotors themselves should have enough mass to store the frictional energy of a full, panic-stop without warpage.
*The wheel bearing grease should be good to 250-degrees F.
*If you have access to an infrared,remote pyrometer,you could measure the actual hub temperatures on the car after a hard stop.
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*Under steady highway driving,the friction energy is a function of power transferred,and with reduced aerodynamic drag,the required road load horsepower is also reduced,so in effect,everything runs cooler.
*If you 'build light',you won't be adding significant mass/ inertia,the kinetic energy of which, must be dissipated as heat under hard deceleration.
*Dedicated ram-air cooling ducts from the forward stagnation area to the rotors could always be added should you feel the need.

Looks like a sure recipe to perish in a fireball of death.

Care to explain frank ?

How hard do you use your brakes?

You could even go with some forced air cooling fer the brakes...automatically activated when the temp rises above a certain temp. ;)

Frank I try to use them as little as possible..
The transmission in lupo 3l is a Manuel transmission with an automated changer. The lupo engine breaks a lot because of that.
The lupo 3l came stock with 15mm break discs to save weight but pretty much everyone here in Denmark switch to 18mm discs as the caliber is from a vw polo and can handle 18mm.
For heat issues I could even go for ventilated discs if heat on the discs is a problem.

You should have sufficient airflow under the car hitting your tire and wheel on the inside, unless you have added deflectors or something else similar in front of them. Remember the air flow under the front part of your car is typically at about a 30 degree angle.

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Someone asked about forced air brake cooling using ducts. These create constant drag as they constantly are ducting the air cooling the brakes whether they need it or not. I explain a way to use the brake light signal to turn on/off the ducts, so that they do not create drag when they are not needed. Apparently this is not welcome.
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These Rube Goldberg solutions are slaying me! We don't even know if the brakes get hot yet.

Do you drive in heavy city traffic, or up and down mountains? Is the vehicle heavily loaded or is it mostly just you inside? I'm a flatlander, mostly lightly loaded car, small towns and highway driving. I go over 100,000 miles on a set of brake pads. For me, the times the brakes get hottest are when the road salt causes corrosion such that the calipers don't release. :mad: Other than that, I don't turn much gasoline into braking heat. If that is you too, then don't worry about it.

here ia project I did on front air ducts.....
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...kes-18011.html

Hi frank this is from my introduction

Beside this I drive in my free time aswell on prity much the same roads
There is no mountains in Denmark :) just wery small hills that don't need breaking going down :) and if it's needed the lupo beaks excellent with the motor on hills

The car weighs 830kg so it's really light.. I sometime drive with about 100kg worth of tools and materials when I work as electrician for friends.
I Think i have done close to 50000 miles on the upgraded break discs and they have 50000 more in them

The mountains in Denmark are like those in Holland; very well hidden.
I used to live on the 18th floor of a highrise in the province of Zuid Holland (5 million inhabitants). I own 3 pinball machines and used to joke I got the highest scores of all Zuid Holland. Certainly not the best, just the highest ;)

Also I believe David does not wear baseball caps backwards. I cannot see how a front wheel well cover on his Lupo would cause excessive brake heating.

A little update here.

My friend from the states is still awaiting some items that he needs to ship to me so I haven't gotten the cameras and screen for the side mirror yet.

And I need those before I start to cut the foam into shape and apply the glass fiber.

I cancel my order for the HID kit I ordered and got me a set of H4 led with high and low beam
Something like thise 50W H4 H L LED High Power Hiyg Car Headlight Kit 6000K 1800Lm | eBay

Ones installed I will go to my local car shop and have then aligned as good as possible

Here is a review of someone who has them installed
Cree LED H4 headlight bulbs (2000lm) - MX-5 Miata Forum

I've never had any problems with brakes overheating on the Aerocivic, even on my old commute into the North Carolina mountains. The road descending out of the mountains had a 900 foot drop, had sections steep enough to require dropping into 3rd gear to climb them and had a sharp turnoff halfway down where I had to slow from 65mph down to 10mph to make the turn. Then most of the rest of the descent was that 3rd gear steep grade requiring repeated braking to keep the speed down. Even when making this descent in 95F summer temps, I had no problems with brakes overheating.

And on the Aerocivic, I'm exhausting most of my radiator/engine compartment air out through the front wheel wells, which keeps snow/ice from building up on the rollers in the winter, but which also should aggravate any possible brake overheating problems that might exist in the summer, but so far I haven't seen any.

I, for one, laughed out loud,thanks. Walbum -- Consider yourself welcomed.

Front skirts may be un-needed, BMW currently uses an external duct they call an Air Curtain™ as a substitute. That Ur-SAAB prototype has skirted front wheels but the wheelwells are huge gaping holes under the car. It's hard to go wrong with what the tuners call 'stance'.

You could always use fuses that are temp-sensitive or thermistors to trigger a warning light on the dashboard.
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Edit: I looked at the thread on the Miata Forum about LED lights and I wasn't impressed with the low beam cutoff—at all. I've run Hella H-4 since the 80s and the cut-off is so sharp when the car bounces you can see the line move front-to-back on the road.

I've seen HID lights that have a cut-off as sharp, or sharper, but what really impressive is the uniform lighting with no hot-spots.

What I want to do is run projectors in the old VW bus headlights. I've got the fluted European glass that wants an unfluted bulb. Morimoto Minis with Angel lights. Should be syk-o-delic.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSM4ih_EbrM