Discs and pads confusion

[Spack]

after hearing about brake noise and wear on the OEM set up I decided to have a bit of a nose about for other options, seems I've stumbled upon a bit of a mine field.
Discs seem to be by and by you have to pay a fair bit as expected, there's a couple of options but not much really.
Euro car parts seem to have two front discs for the RS3 8V for under £100, I'm presuming there's something afoot there or I'll be soon going into the buying and selling discs business lol

Pads is where my confusion lies, there's numerous options available some from the same manufacture that seem to vary wildly depending where you go, you'll find a pair of Brembo pads for £300 on one site, then £100 on another, many like the Pagid display they come with wear sensors but I've read these arnt compatible with the sensors on the car?!? Help!

Anyone got a list of just discs that fit, and pads that fit that will work with the OEM sensors??

 

[Arcam]

after hearing about brake noise and wear on the OEM set up I decided to have a bit of a nose about for other options, seems I've stumbled upon a bit of a mine field.
Discs seem to be by and by you have to pay a fair bit as expected, there's a couple of options but not much really.
Euro car parts seem to have two front discs for the RS3 8V for under £100, I'm presuming there's something afoot there or I'll be soon going into the buying and selling discs business lol

Pads is where my confusion lies, there's numerous options available some from the same manufacture that seem to vary wildly depending where you go, you'll find a pair of Brembo pads for £300 on one site, then £100 on another, many like the Pagid display they come with wear sensors but I've read these arnt compatible with the sensors on the car?!? Help!

Anyone got a list of just discs that fit, and pads that fit that will work with the OEM sensors??

The only "drop in" replacement front discs that don't require any mods are the Tarox 2 peice one which I use and are about £1k a set. I also use the Tarox rears and I will be starting a new thread to discuss them this week.

Pads vary wildly even from the same manufacturers due to the different compounds available. I run Pagid RS29 on the front c£450 per set and EBC Yellow Stuff on the rear c£50 as the RS29 compound I like us not available for the rear pad shape.

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[Spack]

How do those prices compare to OEM from Audi?

 

[Arcam]

How do those prices compare to OEM from Audi?

More expensive

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[Spaceman_RS3]

There's a new drop in option for discs now guys and proper discs they are two piece AP racing ones from Tom Wriggly Motorsport

Brand New

Audi RS3 8V 2015 onwards AP Brake Disc Kit
1 x RH 380mm AP Brake Disc
1 x LH 380mm AP Brake Disc
2 x Custom Bells
4 x 5mm Calliper Spacers

This kit is made to be used with OEM 8 pot calliper, bracket and pads and to fit under the OEM 19 inch wheels. This setup is a massive improvement over the the OEM discs. It features 2 sided discs both floating which gets around the problem of over heading and warping on the standard disc 

U.K. Postage only.
Please contact me about shipping overseas.
Please contact me before pressing buy it now to ensure this will fit your veichle.
Tom 07791317886
£890
I can supply kits for other makes and models so please contact me with what you require.

That's the info I got from tom.
Got pictures too

 

[Spaceman_RS3]

 

[Arcam]

They look really nice, not sure I would class them as oem drop in replacements as spacers have to be fitted and they may require the back plates to be removed.

I am a huge fan of AP having run them for years on other cars and the price of the kit is very good, I was a little surprised to see they are 380mm as the diameter of the stock discs is spot on, the rears could perhaps do with a 10 or 20 mil increase. Are they 32mm or 34mm thick?

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[Spaceman_RS3]

Sure the standard back plate fits.

And I'm sure he said they are thicker than the standard discs I'll ask for a size.
He does the rear rs7 kit for the 8v

 

[Arcam]

Sure the standard back plate fits.

And I'm sure he said they are thicker than the standard discs I'll ask for a size.
He does the rear rs7 kit for the 8v

I think the RS7 upgrade a bit ott size wise and it uses that damn wavy disc so it won't match the front visually. If he offered a AP rear that would be nice

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[Spaceman_RS3]

That's true about not matching I'll ask him.

 

[Hal Adams]

At least though the AP fronts will be a style match with the standard rears. I considered APs for the front to match up the styles, but chose to do the RS7 rears as they might have a better chance to escape nulling my warranty.

 

[Arcam]

At least though the AP fronts will be a style match with the standard rears. I considered APs for the front to match up the styles, but chose to do the RS7 rears as they might have a better chance to escape nulling my warranty.

Tarox rears would be a pretty good match to the front APs.

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[Spaceman_RS3]

Spoke to tom the front ap discs are actually 36mm thick for better heat. Handling.

He will also doing a matching rear ap disc setup up and caliper bracket.

 

[Arcam]

Spoke to tom the front ap discs are actually 36mm thick for better heat. Handling.

He will also doing a matching rear ap disc setup up and caliper bracket.

Excellent result on the rear disc, a 36mm front with stock caliper may very well have pad binding issues with off the shelf pads unless he is supplying pads for the kit as well.

With the stock and Tarox 34mm discs I had binding issues when hot with the Pagid 4-2 and RS29 compounds as they were .7mm thicker than the standard for that pad shape of 16.5mm, and both of those compounds would be a good match for the AP disc. That is why I was surprised to see he had used a 380mm disc, the larger discs have to be thicker to resist warping.

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[Rocketer]

Why can't aftermarket brands do the same as oem without a bracket? Yes, I know Tarox has it but most of the others seems to use bracket for caliper, why can't they fit it like oem, we are talking AP, Movit and so on, strange, or is it much cheaper/easier to do it that way?

 

[Hal Adams]

The bracket is to extend the radius of the caliper grip to cater for larger diameter discs.

 

[Rocketer]

Ok, but I mean why can't they fit it in like a oem replacement whitout brackets? In other words Audi did it on their own car and Tarox in the aftermarket, that's it, or is there any other? I remember a seller here that had approx 10 different brands and most of those hadn't anything to RS3 or coming later or bracket and he wasn't so shure that there isn't gonna be a problem with it, feels pretty strange to me.

As Arcam said bigger means thicker discs which means other problems.

 

[Spack]

On the subject of brakes has anyone experienced bad squeeking from the OEM set up? My brakes seem to squeek quite loud all the time?

 

[Hal Adams]

Ok, but I mean why can't they fit it in like a oem replacement whitout brackets? In other words Audi did it on their own car and Tarox in the aftermarket, that's it, or is there any other? I remember a seller here that had approx 10 different brands and most of those hadn't anything to RS3 or coming later or bracket and he wasn't so shure that there isn't gonna be a problem with it, feels pretty strange to me.

As Arcam said bigger means thicker discs which means other problems.

There are only so many hubs and calipers available. A manufacturer designs a car according to what is in their parts bin and only if absolutely necessary will they design a new hub or caliper. With their many parts bins, they can be sure of making a corner to suit the particular model so that a caliper bolts directly to a hub and the disc fits nicely inside the caliper without any brackets. But along we come and want to change things and go for a big brake kit that is universally designed by the likes of Brembo or AP. They cannot make a different BBK to suit every car with all the different hub sizes and disc offsets, so they make a universal kit with bells and brackets for individual models. Some models as you say, do not require brackets, so in the cases you mention, Audi raided their parts bins to get the right combination and Tarox may well have made a disc with the offset and size suitable for an Audi, but is the same kit a direct fit to a BMW say, I bet not and here is where brackets come in...

 

[Hal Adams]

On the subject of brakes has anyone experienced bad squeeking from the OEM set up? My brakes seem to squeek quite loud all the time?

Yes, it is a subject with many pages duplicated many times on every forum...

 

[Rocketer]

There are only so many hubs and calipers available. A manufacturer designs a car according to what is in their parts bin and only if absolutely necessary will they design a new hub or caliper. With their many parts bins, they can be sure of making a corner to suit the particular model so that a caliper bolts directly to a hub and the disc fits nicely inside the caliper without any brackets. But along we come and want to change things and go for a big brake kit that is universally designed by the likes of Brembo or AP. They cannot make a different BBK to suit every car with all the different hub sizes and disc offsets, so they make a universal kit with bells and brackets for individual models. Some models as you say, do not require brackets, so in the cases you mention, Audi raided their parts bins to get the right combination and Tarox may well have made a disc with the offset and size suitable for an Audi, but is the same kit a direct fit to a BMW say, I bet not and here is where brackets come in...

Ok, understand the thinking of keeping costs low and it has to fit many models and so on as easy as it can.

Although I will remember that Tarox bought a pair of discs after Arcam was asking about them if they had anything for our cars and made them out from that? Hopefully I remember it right now? Took a couple of weeks and they had done it. It can of course have been so that they had similar to other audi models in the production line and had to change some parameters, I am just guessing on that?

Otherwize its probably not a problem to have bracket but it feels better without and I prefer a bolt on if its possible.

 

[Arcam]

You are correct Rocketer, Tarox made a custom bell to mount the disc to with the correct offset etc, the billet discs they make come in many sizes and finishes (although they are made in small quantities) so in theory if you wanted a smaller or larger discs it could mount to the same bell.

The issue comes when you increase the size of the disc, the only way to deal with this is either supply a new mounting bracket to move the caliper out the required amount to suit the new diameter or the cheaper option of supplying spacers to move the caliper out the required amount.

I hope that with the kit for the 380mm discs that proper instructions are included on how to re-align the caliper to the discs and that the torque figures for the mounting bolts is also supplied, Audi will not give a figure for the 2 Allen bolts that will need to be removed to fit the spacers, they don't even allow the dealers to unfasten those bolts! I don't agree with Audi on this matter for a number of reasons, suffice to say I have a lot of experience in this area and the procedure to align the caliper to the disc is not hard.