Content > Masa's Audi A3

As already mentioned, I had layed my eyes on a brake upgrade kit. And you all know where that usually leads to. Now that the cooling was taken care of, it was time to move forward.

With the help of a fellow ‘freak – thanks Pasi -, I got a good deal on the Brembo Junior GT kit. The kit comes with 330x28mm cross-drilled (or slotted if you prefer those) 1-piece rotors, “Lotus” style 4-pot calipers, carriers, sports brakepads and stainless steel brake hoses. A complete package with everything needed for the upgrade, and good instructions with which the installation is a breeze.

As expected, installation of the kit was as easy as it can get – propably didn’t take more than an hour or two per side. Just plug’n'play. One important aspect (which I ofcourse had to learn the hard way..) to keep in mind is that the kit doesn’t only change the size of the rotors and calipers, but also the offset of the rotor. Compared to the OEM setup, Brembo uses an offset which pushes the rotor roughly 10mm closer to the inside of the wheels. This combined with the additional clearance required by the larger calipers, and the couple additional mm’s from the rotors themselves, means that certain types of wheels are quite likely to not fit with the kit. My current wheels back then (ASA AR1) would not clear the Brembo’s, which meant I had to go wheel-shopping first. Suddenly, the price of the upgrade wasn’t quite that good anymore

Anyway, enough of that, and on to the brakes themselves. First impressions on the track where almost unbelievable. The stopping power, and maybe even more importantly the improved feedback from the brakes was on a entirely new level. Braking on the ABS limit was much easier now. This meant that now I had to unlearn my earlier braking style with the stock brakes, and focus on trying to brake much later and a lot harder. Not that that was a problem as such, but you know what they say of teaching old dogs new tricks..

The sports pads that come with the kit are good for street and maybe light tracking, but not for serious use. The pads will start to fade quite quickly, and if abused enough, will leave a fair amount of pad deposits on the rotors. This obviously isn’t good, so the pads had to go. Pagid pads came highly recommended by multiple ‘freaks, so it was an easy choice to go with their RS29′s. These turned out to work perfectly, fade was no longer any concern at all. I did have a bit of vibrations from the brakes still from time to time, but I suspect this was due to the deposits left earlier by the Brembo (Ferodo) pads.

And one minor detail worth mentioning for those of you interested in the aesthetics: the Brembo rotors are not finished with a zinc coating, unlike the OEM rotors. As a result, it doesn’t take long for the rotors to rust all over. I took care of this by painting the hub-sections of the rotors with black heat-resistant paint, which seems to have held in place very nicely, despite the track usage.

All in all, a very nice upgrade with real tangible results. Easily recommendably to anyone not afraid of the possible downsides. And let’s not forget about the bling-factor either