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Ti heat shields eliminated brake fade for my CTS-V

Ti heat shields eliminated brake fade for my CTS-V

I wanted to say again that I'm very happy with the shims so far. At Pueblo the ambient temps were near ninety. Many cars in my run group were...
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Worked Great in Race Conditions

Worked Great in Race Conditions

With the Hard Brakes backing plates installed, we noticed overall improved braking performance in the H-Stock BMW 135i car immediately. With one of...
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Track Wisdom

"Very high [brake] temperatures can also cause the brake fluid to boil with a resultant increase in pedal travel. This should be detected immediately by the driver, as a very small quantity of boiling fluid is enough for the pedal to go right to the floor without any effect; in contrast to the liquid brake fluid, the boiling part is compressible. It is particularly important that when the car has been stopped for a short time -- up to 15 or 20 minutes after a drive in which the brakes have become very hot -- the pedal is depressed for a check. When the car is at rest, brakes act as a heat sink from which heat spreads to the fluid contained in the calipers; brakes which were fully operative when the car was driven may have become totally inefficient after it has stood awhile."

-- Paul Frere, Sports Car and Competition Driving

What benefit do these provide once the calipers are heat soaked?

Heat naturally transfers from hot zones into cooler zones, and will seek the easiest path to do so (i.e. the path that transmits the heat the most readily). The main benefit of our titanium heat shields is that they provide more resistance to the transfer of heat from the brake pad to the caliper piston, compared to the standard steel, iron and aluminum components used in brake assemblies. However even with this additional resistance to heat it is possible for the entire system to become heat soaked, to the point where the caliper piston temps are the same as the brake pad backing plate. The heat shields can buy you some time (seconds in a corner, or laps in a session) before this occurs.

Once the brake system reaches saturation point, the heat shields will not be able to help much, as there is no longer a "thermal gradient" of heat traveling from the pad to the piston, and hence no heat flow gradient to block. However when the brakes are released and the cooling starts the properties of the titanium will help again. Our titanium alloy does not retain heat readily, and cools faster than steel. This means that the heat shield will go back to having a lower temperature faster than the brake pad backing plate does, and commence to preventing additional heat flow into the piston.

Our titanium heat shields can also provide benefits even when the car is stopped off track. Heat can flow from the brake pad into the depressed caliper pistons during a pit stop, and result in boiling of the brake fluid making for a nasty surprise at the first corner out of the pits. Our heat shields will help to prevent that scenario, although they cannot eliminate the concern completely.