Front brake disk air deflectors

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pwykes
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Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by pwykes »

Hi Chaps,

Over the years i have patched these up but they are now coming to end of life. My question is can i just break them off and throw them away as these flow diverter's are not seen on braking systems on other cars.

Cheers phil
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by Kitch »

Half the cars out there have probably lost them anyway! They were only plastic on some mk2s, break off quite frequently
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by mat_fenwick »

I wonder if they were deemed necessary/desirable because the BX often has unvented wheels? Certainly more modern designs of alloys are a lot more open. Also, the viscosity of LHM seems to vary more with temperature than conventional brake fluid, so I wonder if this is another factor.

However, you may not drive it to the extremes to which it was designed for, and I've certainly never noticed a difference during several thousand miles of driving without. Mine are fortunately OK at the moment but I always used to grab a set from the scrapyard when BXs were always present. Down to my last one now :(
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by rutter123 »

In my case it's the metal brackets that have rusted away the plastic deflectors are pretty intact.
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by Jaba »

I have always regarded them as there to help reduce the brake fade that unvented discs on BXs are prone too when the brakes are used repeatedly.
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by pwykes »

Thanks for the replies,
I think they are unnecessary but the points made about brake efficiency are very important and to discard them would be altering the spec of the car. In the event of an accident and investigation i am sure that the insurance would use this as a tool not to pay out. Made the bracket assembly out of 1.6mm steel plate and welded. The air deflector was formed out of 1.6mm aluminium plate and pop riveted to the steel. I just hate undoing them caliper bolts.
Thanks Phil
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by Kitch »

pwykes wrote:Thanks for the replies,
I think they are unnecessary but the points made about brake efficiency are very important and to discard them would be altering the spec of the car. In the event of an accident and investigation i am sure that the insurance would use this as a tool not to pay out.
Don't suppose you've got a tin-foil had going spare? :wink:
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by Defender110 »

pwykes wrote:Thanks for the replies,
I think they are unnecessary but the points made about brake efficiency are very important and to discard them would be altering the spec of the car. In the event of an accident and investigation i am sure that the insurance would use this as a tool not to pay out. Made the bracket assembly out of 1.6mm steel plate and welded. The air deflector was formed out of 1.6mm aluminium plate and pop riveted to the steel. I just hate undoing them caliper bolts.
Thanks Phil

No insurance company could use this as a tool not to pay out, to do so they would need to prove positively that any accident was caused purely by this fault which they could not do.
One could argue that in wet weather they actually decrease brake efficiency by directing water into the brakes that the back plates are designed to keep out.
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by Kitch »

They really wouldn't give a shit. If you pranged a BX it would go to the bodyshop, get put in the corner of the yard with the completely totalled stuff, the assessor would walk round, see the age, check the VIN and write 'T/L' (total loss) on the windscreen. They you'd see if you could buy it back as salvage, or let it go to the scrappy. That's as far as they get. They wouldn't want to fix it, regardless of cost, because fixing old cars is a complete PITA for normal insurance companies.

They wouldn't fight or try to wriggle out of anything, because they don't have the knowledge of every single detail on every single model of car. If it was something obvious, like a V8 engine in the back and the thing had been space-framed, then maybe it'd be a different story, but for something small on a BX, they really wouldn't give a shit. They'd have to spend days inspecting it and comparing with other cars to even figure out it was supposed to have an air deflector there.
They pay the engineers quite a lot of money, and with the value of BXs they'd probably lose money by allowing the engineer to research every last knook and cranny to get out of what may well be only a £1000 payout.

So, please don't worry about the deflector :)
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Re: Front brake disk air deflectors

Post by rutter123 »

Nuff said Kitch.
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