Subject: What a HUGE difference! Author: Triton540i (moderator) : member since March, 2004 : 1618 posts Posted on: 2005-02-04 18:30:53

I just did a bunch of work on my VW’s braking system yesterday and what a difference an afternoon can make on the performance and safety on your car. I’ve had problems with my braking system on my VW on and off for a couple months and until recently it had decreased to scary proportions. Sometimes my car would pull to one side when braking, other times it would stop just fine. Recently I’ve had problems with my car just having the ability to STOP, my foot would have to go almost all the way down to the floor and in a couple cases I needed to use the E-brake just to keep from colliding into the car in front of me! I was thinking that it could have been several things wrong with my braking system, so something had to be done and I ordered new rotors & pads for the front and new shoes and a fresh spring kit for the rear.

Since the weather yesterday was perfect for working on my car I took advantage of the situation and tackled the job! I’ve never used a pressurized brake bleeding system before and Hakan was very generous in lending me his, what a difference! It was nice to be able to pressurize the brake system and go to a wheel and bleed the brakes with no assistance, the pressurized system really made the whole thing go quick and easy with no hang-ups.

I wasn’t really used to the way the rear braking system worked on my VW as I’m more familiar with the systems used on American cars. I was a bit nervous about seeing the rear bearings sitting there in front of me after removing the brake drum, but the design really makes sense. If a person wanted to change out their bearings, they’re easy to get to and service. The front braking system was totally easy as it always is on disc brakes on the cars I’ve owned. Here’s some interesting data I collected from measuring the thickness of my front discs. VW uses Brembo rotors as factory rotors so I’m assuming my replacement Brembos are pretty much the same, what do you think about these numbers? Oh, I’ve never had any problems with warping rotors (brake pulsing) previous to this brake job.

Front Rotors/Side Old New
-Left .432in. .475in.
-Right .400in. .475in

Difference:
-Left rotor from stock: 0.043in.
-Right rotor from stock: 0.075in.

Now that I have new brakes and I can actually stop, I’ve got to get used to my car’s braking system again! What a great difference an afternoon’s worth of work can do not only for my car, but for the soul, isn’t that what loving cars is all about?

-Eric




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BMW E34

• What a HUGE difference! - Triton540i 2005-02-04 18:30:53 (689 views)
  • Re: What a HUGE difference! - stuart 2005-02-05 11:10:24 (840 views)