Content > Masa's Audi A3

Let’s face it – the A3 was never designed to be tracked, and as such, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the suspension isn’t the only part in need of an upgrade.

The factory brakes, although not that small (312mm front, 286mm rear), were quite disappointing in terms of brake feel and fade resistance. To be honest, they are crap. A simple pad upgrade would have likely helped a lot (if these would have been available at that time), but instead, a slightly different (read: expensive) plan was made.

One of the main design flaws of the factory brakes is the lact of ventilation. There are simply no air guides or ducts at all to guide fresh air to the front wheel wells (well, not to the rear either). This, combined with the common fixed 1-piece rotor design resulted in major problems with brake temperatures, and this had already quickly translated to one front wheel bearing gone up to the spare-parts-heaven.

As the brake upgrade kit I was looking at was also based on a fixed 1-piece rotor design (yeah, a 2-piece floating set would be so much better, but the costs would also be at least double), something needed to be done to help keep the temperatures in control. Fortunately the foglight housings in the S-line bumper looked like they had been designed with this purpose in mind. Time to get the hands dirty then.

A few long DIY-nights later, it was done. No, the ducts were not designed with a 24h race in mind, and better designs are available for sure. I was however very happy with the end results – clean and hidden, yet also effective. And ofcourse the grill to keep bigger pieces of dirt, squirrels and such from entering the duct. A test run with the duct blocked on one side showed a significant decrease in temperatures on the ventilated side – up to 20-30%. This should hopefully be enough to keep the upcoming upgraded brakes (and not to forget the wheel bearings) happier!

[ Sorry for the low quality on the pictures, they were taken with my mobile phone. Also, the pictures are from the first revision of the ducts - a couple changes have been made at a later time, namely getting rid of the 90-degree bends, and better alignment of airflow towards the center of the wheels. ]