The flavor of the day right now seems to be wheels and brake caliper repairs (adnoh's world).
Many years ago when I was still racing cars I had a brain fart.
Brake fade was a really big problem. We ran high temp brake fluid but I could boil the brake fluid at will. One of my ideas was to cut the caliper piston. Unfortunately we never got around to experiment with this. I even thought about getting a patent on it LOL. Another idea I had was water cooling and we actually tried this on the formula car. Anyways I just want your opinions on this idea. Is it stupid ?? If so Why ?? Is it a good idea ?? If so why ??
Below are two pics and I think it is self explanatory.
If you cut slots (my reasoning goes) you get some air flow into that piston hollow behind the brake pad. Also the contact patch is less between the pad and piston and therefore less heat transfer to the fluid. I don't see how this would cause any issues. There is no need to have full piston to pad contact. The pressure will be the same.
Sure hope someone tries this on any vehicle and reports back. If it's a good idea I sure hope someone runs with it.
CO

Ummmm
With the slots there would be more chance of mud etc packing into open area. Maybe not to big of deal.

I feel the stock fiberglass (guess) packing/ padding in-between the SS and the metal backer is also there for a heat transfer reason.

As far as having an effect on pressure to the pads. I don't it would have any negitive impact.

When I do some testing next week I'll take my heat gun and try to get some readings.

One thing I need to wrap my head around is the heat transfer as a whole.

Maybe get some heat paint. You being a race car driver should be able to shed some lit on that.

Engine, plug etc I have a good idea, the breaking system never done any major research. Time for me to learn something new.

Yeah we did some heat paint on my formula calipers.
I don't remember the data as it was a long time ago.
They also have heat sticks which is similar to the heat paint. You just smear a small spot on.
I found the sticks but I know I had the paint but can't find it. Now I got a treasure hunt on my plate. If I remember right I had 500'F - 550'F - and 600'F.
CO

We had Inconel plates behind my brake pads but if I recall right, they didn't help to much.
The brake heat was tremendous. You have to slow the car down from 150/170mph to about 50mph or less to make a corner. This is done in the least amount of time as possible to get the lap times down. That's a hell of a lot of BTU.

As for heat transfer -- once the pad is heat soaked it's transferring the rest of the heat to the piston in the caliper. In turn it's boiling the brake fluid around that piston. At the time there was all kinds of ideas like 1 psi check valves to prevent pad/piston return so that the brake pedal wouldn't have to travel as far when you slam on the brakes. As I recall, it was not successful in my opinion. Another idea was a return line to the master cylinder that had a check valve in it. Only when you released the brakes did the fluid go back to the master cylinder fill pot. Problem here is that there is almost no real amount of fluid return. We are talking about a few drops or less. It's a hydraulic system and those are sealed. Only amount would be pad travel which better be fkn near zero. It's UN-nerving to feel a brake pedal move.
CO

Below is a link to what we used at the time. The only difference was that ours were hexagon shaped and not round like this product.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/wil- ... =ThreeStar
Here is a review: I think it's helping to maintain the disc brake pads from fully retracting, but minimally. Hoped it would perform better. It did no harm.
The rest of the reviews seemed useless. Comments like fast shipping, easy to install etc.
Nothing performance or actual use reports.
The comment above was my experience as well.
CO

I don't know if anyone can use the info below but in the pic you can see some gauges and a red knob. The red knob is for brake bias adjustment (front/rear) as you're driving. The gauges actually measure brake pressure in PSI. While I was racing the brake pressure was around 350ish PSI. Any higher and you lock a wheel.
Not sure what PSI the oddy brakes run at before lock up.
CO

If one wanted to pursue this and use the grooves, they could be filled with a ceramic type epoxy just to take up space and be low heat transfer, I have seen some exhaust system repair system that sets up like lava, I have used it at 2000F and seemed to be ok, this was just for a short period so I don't know how well it will hold up, you would loose the air space but I think it may have the same result.

I have been doing some reading and learning.
I try to find relevant information. Like with sparkplugs, Engine cases, pistons etc there's a way to see or understand at least the way heat transfer occurs with some effects on related parts.

Thanks CO for helping start to get a handle on it. Now I can go ahead with a repair and a replacement. Once again it showed how much engineering went into the ody/ pilots.

Something as simple as a parking brake. Now ask why didn't the utv's get one. Any way!

Few more pics I find to be relevant.