Yup, roll on the brakes to load up the suspension, then do full threshold braking. It is incredibly fun! Pair it with compressed braking zones ) on the brakes for a lesser duration). And just be mindful on identifying when the car uses the front brakes without you hitting the pedal and experimenting with either adjusting your line, inputs, or both so that it doesn’t come on.
Thanks for the advice. I normally drive a Vette at the track but tbis can be applied to any car on track. I was expecting the heavier AWD RS5 to push more than the vette so I tried to get most of the braking done in a straight line then get back on the gas sooner to power through the apex. It pushed more than the ZR1 but not until things started heating up. The combination of DSG and AWD makes the car easier to drive on track than the Vette but you do feel the weight. I do need to brake later… It’s something I work up to and by day 2 of the weekend I was headed there, but had no more brakes to practice with.
Being kinder to the components is an ongoing learning process, but worth the skill and $$ !
I went to that track weekend with my buddy who brought his CTS-V wagon, but he usually drives a Miata. The skills you learn re braking late (or not much at all), carrying momentum, and not relying on electronic driver aids make high speed runs in a supercharged station wagon with the tail balancing through high speed turns that much more impressive. Lots of fun practicing!
Psych and company:
Do you know if the dust boots that are melted in my pics are a separate part than the brake piston seals? If they are, can I replace just the dust boots if it seems like the seals are ok because there are no leaks? Do you need to open the caliper and take it apart to replace the dust boots alone? I don’t plan on doing this myself but I am trying to guesstimate how big a job this will be for the shop.
Thanks
Again, I haven’t done it on the Brembo 8 piston caliper, but it should be as easy as picking off the crispy pieces of the dust boot off of the caliper and popping in new ones. They are separate from the actual piston seals (that require a brake caliper rebuild). If there is no brake fluid leaking from the calipers, you should just be able to change the dust boots.
I didn’t comb through all the posts, but I run xp20’s in front ST-60 calipers and xp8’s in the rear on my B8.5 S4.
One question is did you perform a bed-in procedure with the race pads? It might be the case that the pads/rotors get the layer bedded during the 1st session, but I found I got much better results after bedding extremely aggressively (the type of bedding you can only do in a completely desolated back country road) the night before the first event. Getting the transfer layer onto the rotor is imperative for proper function of your brakes, particularly to lower the pad wear rate.
I’ve found brake wear on my car is highly dependent on the track, and varied a lot between the 2 front calipers. In my case, I got nearly zero wear during a 2 day DE at mid-ohio, while ate through about 60% of one pad during a 2 day DE at gingerman. I’ve heard RA is very hard on brakes (lots of stories of people going off due to fade). Some of the wear could also be due to leaving stability control on.
Those rotors look horrible though, amazing those kinds of cracks formed that quick. Your pads wearing down to the backplates did your dust boots in, pads provide some buffer between your hot rotors and boots/pistons/fluid. I also use the .5 mm solid Ti shims from racing brakes. We know that ECS bore out the xdrilled holes from blanks, so this really reaffirms what we know: cheap x-drilled rotors are bad news for track duty.
They had us do some slalom and threshold braking during my very first DE with ACNA. Told us exactly what you’re saying. I actually had an instructor at a later DE comment that I was way too heavy on brake inputs lol…really what I missed was the point that you need to transfer weight smoothly forward, and THEN hammer the brakes. I was just hammering them and my instructor was not happy lol.
They are indeed separate parts, caliper needs to come off the car to do it.
1 set of dust boots for 1 caliper PN 3D0698472 I see them on the internet for around 30 dollars
the rebuild kit including pistons and the seals for 1 caliper is 3D0698471 and I see that at about 213 dollars