Hello everyone,

Here's a story that I think most of you will appreciate...I recently bought a 97' 4.2 Quattro with 90k miles and wasn't sure if theTBhad been done, soI saved up my pennies forthe service. Then,when I was poking around under the hood I noticed a nice little sticker that said "Crankshaft drive belt replaced at 75,000mi," which was about 15k miles ago on the car. Well, now I've got this cash saved for a service that I don't need... but I've wanted to upgrade my brake pads for a while, so I'm thinking that I'd like to get some good ceramic pads on the car.

Anyone know a good set of pads for the car that have the proper sensor connectors? I've seen some advertised as having "round" sensor connectors... is this the right one?

Thanks in advance.

 

The absoulte BEST wat to tell if your car has round or oval sensors is to pull teh wheel off (sensors are on the front only), find the connector for the wear-sensor (a pair of wires leading to a connector), pull it apart and look at it. If it's "round" you have round connectors. if it's oval...

Ceramic pads - Well, if your concern is brake-dust then these are what you'll wanna swap to. IF, on teh other hand, you're concerned with stopping QUICKER, not so much. Ceramic pads require a MUCH HIGHER pedal effort, in my experiences, than regular pads, for a given stopping distance. The reason being is that ceramic pads kinda defeat the purpose of the brake system, as designed. It is designed to dissipate heat, as a side-effect of stopping all that momentum. Carbon-ceramic pads resist heat, but all that heat HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE, right? Know what cracked, warped rotors feel like? I do. Know WHY I do? Yep, thats why.

Spring for a good set of cross-drilled rotors and premium pads, you'll feel teh difference. Of course, if you're going to be taking your yacht to teh TRACK, then it's a different story...

 

ceramics [:'(]

 

See, teh Tech agrees!

Brakes dissipate heat, throughteh rotors and through teh fluid.

ceramic pads deflect the heat back into teh rotors. If rayveedub has gotten around to replacing my rotors, yet, maybe I can get him to snap some pics of teh hairline cracks the ceramic pads I used to have have left in my rotors... The warping is harder to see, so you'll juat hafta take me word for that part

 

Thanks for the advice; I tend to be pretty heavy on the brakes so I'm really glad you gave me a bit of a heads-up there. My biggest concern was noise rather than dust (I've got not problem cleaning the car regularly) which is why I was pretty focused on ceramics. Right now the pads are rather noisy... I believe the last owner put cheaper pads on the car and so they'll squeel a bit though they aren't worn through.

I'm not quite ready to replace the rotors, so perhaps I'll just go the route of some better pads. Should I just look at some premium ATEs or is there something else out there that I should consider more strongly?

 

Check these guys out:
http://www.raceshopper.com/

Call 'em up and talk to 'em. Tell 'em what you roll and how you roll. They give pretty good advice, in my experiences with them.