Front brakes on a 2003 Passat W8....high strangeness!

Once I wear out my Akebono ultra performance ceramics I may try EBC yellow.
The car is underbraked so it eats pads and rotors like a fat kid at a willy wonka chocolate factory got let loose.
That's a good choice, a very good aggressive street pad.
 
Napa is selling some crap tier 25$ rotors for my flex which is actually incredibly cheap since they are closer to 100 bucks. I may buy a pair and swap them just for fun.
 
Fascinating brakes. I wonder what the considerations were when designing that.

What?? Strangness with parts on a VW??!? 😁.

There has to be enthusiast engineers at VAG because of how they speced some of the "mundane" cars. Ex., B6 Passat 4Motion wagon came with 345mm rotors and huge, single piston calipers (think Performance Package from MKVII GTI). 2.0T Komfort wagon just made do with the puny 312 units that they fitted to just about every other car. Well, in an effort to consolidate parts I suppose, they DID fit the aluminum front knuckles from the VR6 one. Don'tcha know, the bigger calipers bolt right up, without any adaptor brackets. Found a set of calipers for $100, cleaned them up and fitted new brake lines. Zimmerman rotors, same HH compound Pagids as yours, and the larger dust shields I found at local LKQ. Viola! OEM+ brake set-up that will detach your retinas for cheap money. Somewhere, a VW parts engineer is chuckling maniacally.

If you haven't already, check out some of B Sport's videos on YouTube. He has technical design experience at VAG and shares some insightful "insider" knowledge.

Eg:
 
These front brakes only came on the W8 trim of the B5.5 Passat and are shared with the performance-orientated Audi B5 S4 sedan. Kind of strange calipers with 4 pads per side plus the wear sensor. Previous pads had life but figured I'd change them out as my shop mentioned it last time it was in/state inspection. I had hit the wear sensors a while back so just cut the wires, twisted ends, taped so turn the light on the dash off. Grabbed some Pagid pads from FCP Euro for $115; they should be the same as what came out. Staightfoward change without having to remove the caliper following a good DIY on YT. First side had to fight a bit b/c I didn't know what I was doing but second one went smoothly. Decided against rotors, they have a small lip but are smooth, no need to waste money here, car gets about 3-4K miles a year and already has a high cost-to-operate! Once I got the pads out/compressed the pistons, the caliper slid smoothly so good there. Test drive says success. This car has fantastic brakes.

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Cool car. only 100 W8 manuals were ever shipped to the USA. Even weirder trivia one of the Audi S8 models was offered with a manual transmission but not for the usa.
 
Cool car. only 100 W8 manuals were ever shipped to the USA. Even weirder trivia one of the Audi S8 models was offered with a manual transmission but not for the usa.
Correct - and I don't have one hahaha....Tip-Tragic auto here. 97 is the number I have for the production data that has been shared in the FB group. V. rare indeed and clearly the better transmission.
 
Fascinating brakes. I wonder what the considerations were when designing that.



If you haven't already, check out some of B Sport's videos on YouTube. He has technical design experience at VAG and shares some insightful "insider" knowledge.

Eg:

"We need this pig to stop at 150mph" - management

"Here" - VW Engineers
 
On the Tail of The Dragon....nothing crazy or really fast but it never missed a beat w/r to braking.

 
I got yellow stuff on my G37 don't remember if it was from or rears but I remember seeing they were GG. I have the updated compound that does not contain copper.
 
Coefficient of friction rating system: https://brakepower.com/brake-pad-friction-coefficient.htm

But I think I care more about ECE R90 for Euro brakes. Which usually means a lot of dust
I run the Jurid version of these pads on our German fleet. They're dusty for sure, but their feel and performance is outstanding; and brown dust, not black dust. This is our BMW E90 after about 500 miles worth of normal driving.

Scott

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