The Blowfish ones are sooo close to the rotor I'd find it hard to believe any other ones delivered more air to the center of the rotor.
These are very different designs. Our design has the plate covering the rotor face, to minimize bleed from inside the rotor ring. Most laser cut flat designs just cover the inside of the rotor opening.
The backing plates we use for our 3" and 4" S197 brake cooling backing plate kits are the
actual OEM Ford stamped dust shields, which have more of a 3D shape instead of the flat, laser cut shape of all other S197 backing plate kits out there. This raised "pocket" inside the rotor ring area does lend itself to putting more air inside the rotor ring and also aims more at the hub itself.
That said, we're switching to a flat laser cut design because these are just TOO DAMNED EXPENSIVE to make this way. As in - we don't make any money at $195/pair. We have to buy the OEM plates (not cheap), plastic bead plastic the paint off (outside shop), modify them/cut/weld the tubes in place, then powder coat the finished pieces (outside shop). Four trips back and forth to outside shops is also a PITA (and an in-house powder coating facility is fiscally foolish, before someone chimes in with that "wisdom"), too much labor, too much cost. I suspect we have 10 times the labor time in making a pair of these than a laser cut piece (where the holes are all cut and they only have to weld on the tube).
And it seems that our $5 premium over the laser cut style backing plates is just too much to bear for many folks, so we're not going to bother to "make them with a better design" and are instead switching to a flat, laser cut design, with a price reduction. Why? Because nobody cares. Its all about the
cheapest American-Muscle-forum-sales-discount-free-shipping deal.
"You win". We'll go cheap and simple, like the rest.
