ND Miata Brake Cooling Kit Testing

Going off our short blog post from last week, I wanted to dive in to how we actually tested our kit. First I would like to explain what equipment we used and how we gathered our data. Using a digital laser infrared thermometer, temperatures were taken at specific locations on the rotor and pads (pictured above) at a repeatable distance for accuracy. Our thermal imager was set to automatically detect max and min temperatures during testing. This allowed us to spot the hottest locations on the rotor's surface even if they were in different locations from side to side.

With the full brake kit installed, we blocked off the fog light inlet on the driver's side of the vehicle (as pictured above) and left the passenger side open. We did this so that we could test the difference between the cooling and the non-cooling side. We tested on a local back road location that sees little to no traffic. The speeds ranged from upwards of 60 mph, down to 20 mph. This resulted in a decent bit of heat build up and not a lot of airflow. At higher rates of speed, we could expect to see larger temperature differences between the ducting and the non-ducting side as the cooling is related to airspeed.

The thermal image above was taken after testing a hard braking event from 60 mph down to 0 mph. Although, you hope to never brake all the way down to 0 mph at the track, this is typically what you will experience under similar braking conditions at higher rates of speed.

To conclude, it is safe to say that our brake cooling kit reduces rotor temperatures even at moderate speeds. As you can tell from the graph and charts above, the rotor temperatures were immediately reduced directly after a hard braking event. If you put the same car on a track where it will see triple digit speeds and test using the same variables, the difference between the cooling and non cooling side will be more significant. Reason being, it would result in more airflow being forced through the brake cooling kit aiding rotor venting from higher rates of speed.

For a more in-depth explanation of how we did our testing, check out our information packet:

Get your ND Miata Brake Cooling Kit here:https://www.verus-engineering.com/shop/a0114a-full-brake-cooling-kit-miata-mx5-nd-386