Anyone non-ABS running the 1" brake MC?

I'm looking for comments on this upgrade and wondering whether people are happy with it.

It's only available for non-ABS cars, the MC on the ABS cars is 23.8 so it's already better than the basic non-ABS version at 22mm.

Let me know what your impressions are.

Thanks
Steve A

I dont like abs on track or autocross built cars. I want to have full control with braking on old cars and I turn off PSM on Porsche that I drive from time to time. Bit it's an advanced thing that took me a good year of running to handle. If your not building or running it for extreem control reasons just run the abs. Bigger rotors dont do much as the larger master. Pads are everything. Used to run hawks hps but now I get better run with bindex hds with slotted rotors. Tires make a huge difference.
Imo these cars are not designed to handle extreem traction with suspention geometry and such small master. So upgrading that is going to pay off. If I had to do it again, and I will be soon, I'd just run willwood setup

Sorry I can’t be of help here, but I am running larger Audi brakes and rotors on the B4V and they are so much better than the stock ones. It has ABS but if it’s any indication, the larger brakes definitely make a difference.

What’s the 1” mc off of, and is it a direct bolt on... even hard lines?

-Todd

Abacus said:

Sorry I can’t be of help here, but I am running larger Audi brakes and rotors on the B4V and they are so much better than the stock ones. It has ABS but if it’s any indication, the larger brakes definitely make a difference.

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Thanks Mark, glad to hear about your upgrades. I have several questions about this I will just post them out and you can respond when you have time. If I've left out something relevant please just bring it up!

1) Is the Audi upgrade front and rear?
2) Is this 4x100 or 5x100 setup?
3) What are the specs for the rotor upgrade? Is the front bigger than the 280mm Corrado (assuming 4x100)?
4) Do you have part numbers for the upgrade or know what vehicles they're sourced from?

ToddA1 said:

What’s the 1” mc off of, and is it a direct bolt on... even hard lines?

-Todd

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The 1" MC is a direct fit item that was used on some Audi cars 1989-92 100/200 quattro and some coupes w/o ABS. It's identical in dimensions to the 22mm MC on the non-ABS Mk3 and B3/4 cars. It requires no changes to fit, even hard lines.

I'm now debating fitting one to the B3V next time the braking system gets serviced. I haven't looked at it recently but it has 38k miles on it since it came out of the shop in 2016, the fluid will need to be flushed on this next summer, same with the Mk3 Jetta that got a new MC in 2014.

Kind of planning ahead actually.

Audi part number 441611021A
Wagner MC128222
Raybestos MC390058
Cardone 112807 (reman)
Centric 130.33110



Steve

That’s a pricey mc. What are you planning on running for brakes? I’m running the 4x100 11” calipers and rotors. The pedal feel and height feels fine with stock 22mm mc.

-Todd

ToddA1 said:

That’s a pricey mc. What are you planning on running for brakes? I’m running the 4x100 11” calipers and rotors. The pedal feel and height feels fine with stock 22mm mc.

-Todd

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Yeah, it is, but the price of some of them have come down. The Centric is available online for $76.xx and I believe it's expensive enough to get free shipping. Some of the others are double that.

The expense is one reason I didn't do it before, but I feel like my brakes aren't as effective as they ought to be, I have 54mm calipers in front and 41mm in the rear. At some point I'm planning to upgrade to the 280mm rotors in front but that still uses the same caliper, just a different bracket. I would just like a firmer pedal and I've always thought the B3/4 was a bit big for the same MC that they used on late Mk2 and Mk3 cars.

Most people who do this upgrade are going to a dual pot caliper like the Girling 60, but I think what I have is fine, just would benefit from the bigger MC.

Steve

Steve Addy said:

1) Is the Audi upgrade front and rear?
2) Is this 4x100 or 5x100 setup?
3) What are the specs for the rotor upgrade? Is the front bigger than the 280mm Corrado (assuming 4x100)?
4) Do you have part numbers for the upgrade or know what vehicles they're sourced from?

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1) The Audi upgrade I have is the front only.
2) It is still 4x100, although you have to run 15" wheels to clear the rotors.
3) The fronts are 280mm, but the calipers are twin piston.
4) Here are some posts from Windex:
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4367336&postcount=8
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4361333&postcount=1979
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4878201&postcount=12

Abacus said:

1) The Audi upgrade I have is the front only.
2) It is still 4x100, although you have to run 15" wheels to clear the rotors.
3) The fronts are 280mm, but the calipers are twin piston.
4) Here are some posts from Windex:
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4367336&postcount=8
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4361333&postcount=1979
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4878201&postcount=12

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Thanks Mark, that's basically the setup I referenced above, the Corrado 280mm rotors (4x100) and the Girling 60 dual pot calipers.

I'm not sure I'm going to bother with the caliper upgrade right now, those can be expensive to source, but I'd like to upgrade the MC to the 1" unit and see how that affects performance with the single piston calipers.

Steve

I don't know about the larger MC on a Non-ABS car but can give my impressions on the smaller MC on 288mm rotors and ATE calipers in the case of a plus suspension conversion involving everything except swapping to ABS or changing the MC: Stopping power is still pretty impressive, ask Abacus.

I’m running the Corrado setup and you’re gaining 1” swept area. My pedal still grabs at the same height as the 10.1” brakes.

From my understanding, the larger mc will only increase pedal feel and nothing else. The caliper pistons are still 54mm, so an upgrade won’t get you much. If you were going to use the dual piston Girling 60s, I could see the need.

-Todd

ToddA1 said:

I’m running the Corrado setup and you’re gaining 1” swept area. My pedal still grabs at the same height as the 10.1” brakes.

From my understanding, the larger mc will only increase pedal feel and nothing else. The caliper pistons are still 54mm, so an upgrade won’t get you much. If you were going to use the dual piston Girling 60s, I could see the need.

-Todd

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And I agree with that, the calipers have the same size pistons so in practice they should require the same effort regardless of placement, or at least within reason (256 to 280), yet I feel (going from one vehicle to another) that the wagon requires too much effort to stop and so I get to this point that I would prefer to have brakes that actuate more quickly.

I agree, the pedal grabs at a reasonable height but I feel like it takes far more effort than it should to bring the car to a stop.

When spring gets here and I get the wagon out I'll do some investigation into what's going on. Everything is new from 2016 save for calipers, which are new to the car but are used from my boxes of Mk3 stuff. As I said before the rears are 41mm Mk4 calipers but I don't think that's enough to create a problem. I could swap those for 38mm Mk4 and see what that does, and maybe adjust the rear pressure regulator, which I doubt would do anything really.

Steve

I love this conversation!
One of my problems is that my non-ABS B4V seems to have too much brakes, but this may be from my tires:
Moderate pedal force will easily lock my wheels. 2 weeks ago in a high-speed emergency stopping on dry pavement, my wheels locked and I had to work hard to manually modulate the brakes a bit to do anything other than just slide down the road... I ended up wearing a flat spit on a front tire anyway, and am now suffering a new vibration while shopping fore tires.

Short version: I can't imagine wanting more brakes.

I would say you have an issue.

Phi1osopher said:

I love this conversation!
One of my problems is that my non-ABS B4V seems to have too much brakes, but this may be from my tires:
Moderate pedal force will easily lock my wheels. 2 weeks ago in a high-speed emergency stopping on dry pavement, my wheels locked and I had to work hard to manually modulate the brakes a bit to do anything other than just slide down the road... I ended up wearing a flat spit on a front tire anyway, and am now suffering a new vibration while shopping fore tires.
Short version: I can't imagine wanting more brakes.

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All 4 evenly or just the rears?

I’m thinking there’s something wrong with the load sensitive rear prop valve.

-Todd

I have yet to drive a B4(V) with adequate brakes. This is an interesting thread.

Ditto, I've never been impressed with the stock brakes on the 4x100 B4

ToddA1 said:

I’m thinking there’s something wrong with the load sensitive rear prop valve.

-Todd

Click to expand...

It's new as of 2016 (MC also) and I have never gotten a lock-up in the rear so I can't believe it's set that far off, but I will admit that because the setup for those is so convoluted I just used a more common sense approach when I installed it.

Diesel_Aggie said:

I have yet to drive a B4(V) with adequate brakes. This is an interesting thread.

Click to expand...

TDIDaveNH said:

Ditto, I've never been impressed with the stock brakes on the 4x100 B4

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Neither have I TBH, I thought the 256mm front and drum rear was adequate for the Mk3 but not stellar. I'm not looking to add a bunch of weight so I'm not sure I want to upgrade to the 280mm Corrado rotors right now but I would consider it at some point. There's a slight weight increase but IIRC I checked at one time and it's not that bad.

My wagon weighs in at 3260 with driver in it (and probably 3/4 tank), which is not what I consider a small car but it's not huge either. I will see what I think when I get it out in the next couple days.

Thanks for the comments,

Steve

I'm running 312mm fronts and 256mm vented rears on my MK3 TDI (all from MK4 20th anniv) and a full 5x100 swap. I tried the 24.5mm MC as i figured it would be needed with the upgrade but I didn't like how stiff it was. There was little room for pedal modulation. I went back to a stock 22mm MC and it's perfect, even with the much larger calipers and discs. This was the same MC that came stock on the car with 10.1" front rotors and rear drums.

Oreganoflow said:

I'm running 312mm fronts and 256mm vented rears on my MK3 TDI (all from MK4 20th anniv) and a full 5x100 swap. I tried the 24.5mm MC as i figured it would be needed with the upgrade but I didn't like how stiff it was. There was little room for pedal modulation. I went back to a stock 22mm MC and it's perfect, even with the much larger calipers and discs. This was the same MC that came stock on the car with 10.1" front rotors and rear drums.

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Same setup from the 2004.5 Mk4 GLI and 337. The reason you didn't need the larger MC (or see benefit from it) is because the pistons on the 'big brake' upgrade are the same size as those on the standard Mk3 / B3/4 cars, 54mm front and 38mm rear.

I believe that unless you go to larger front single piston or dual pot (Girling 60) and / or bigger rear piston calipers (Mk4 41mm or Passat W8 43mm) the issue is likely outside the mechanical components.

I think perhaps my issue is due to ceramic pads or at least the ones I've had on the front. I will be digging into this in the near future when the cars goes to the shop for a post-winter coolant leak somewhere on the engine, that I cannot seem to find just at casual glance.

Steve

I am running the larger Audi 200 MC , Girling dual piston calipers, and 280mm rotors. I do wish I had 288mm rotors so the pads would not overhang and start a squeal after xxxx amount of miles. And also so I had that extra amount of sweep to the pads. But drilling the 5x112 rotors for 4x100 wasnt a simple task. So I just replace the pad and rotors when they are halfway through their life with FCPEURO instead.
I tried grinding the pads on the outer lip so it wouldn’t overhang but again, too much work.

I’ve had it this way for 6-8 years or so. How time fly’s.

kooyajerms said:

I am running the larger Audi 200 MC , Girling dual piston calipers, and 280mm rotors. I do wish I had 288mm rotors so the pads would not overhang and start a squeal after xxxx amount of miles. And also so I had that extra amount of sweep to the pads. But drilling the 5x112 rotors for 4x100 wasnt a simple task. So I just replace the pad and rotors when they are halfway through their life with FCPEURO instead.
I tried grinding the pads on the outer lip so it wouldn’t overhang but again, too much work.

I’ve had it this way for 6-8 years or so. How time fly’s.

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The Girling 60 dual pot calipers are a dead end, Audi never produced a carrier that would allow those to be used on a larger rotor, instead Audi switched to 314mm rotors and moved on, in some cases reverting to the single piston 54mm calipers that have become benchmark.

I never implemented the dual piston setup so I didn't know there was a mis-alignment in the pad / rotor situation. I would have thought that someone would have found a setup that didn't have this problem but I guess not. I have seen pictures of the overhang, I know it takes time but I would just cut the excess off before it becomes an issue.

For reference for anyone the 1" bore MC was used for only a few years on the Audi 90, 100 and 200 models without ABS. The range 89-91 comes to mind.

Steve

I wore flat spots on my front tires, or at least on one of them. It looks like my rear brakes' proportioning valve needs to be adjusted, but also the tires were pretty old (and weather checked), and the loss of traction was almost certainly impacted by old rubber.
I put on fresh front tires, and while I haven't intentionally induced a skid, I have done some very hard braking without loosing traction.

Grinding those ceramic pads take a good amount of work. My machines told me “I’m going to taste that for a whole week”. Poor guy.

kooyajerms said:

Grinding those ceramic pads take a good amount of work. My machines told me “I’m going to taste that for a whole week”. Poor guy.

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I can imagine, did you ever think about just cutting the excess bits off with a cutting wheel vs using a grinder?

Steve

If I remember correctly he tried both, but he may have used up too many wheels.

I’ve milled down Hawk HPS pads using my router table and a carbide router bit. Nasty job... I set up a fan and worked in the street.

-Todd

ToddA1 said:

I’ve milled down Hawk HPS pads using my router table and a carbide router bit. Nasty job... I set up a fan and worked in the street.

-Todd

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Your neighbors give you a lot of latitude, mine scrutinize everything, which is not good now, since I think the fuel pump went south on the Dakota and I'll have to pull the bed (or tilt it up on that side) to extract the bad pump.

With the advent of the virus though, my neighbors have softened a little.

Which reminds me, I hope everyone here is in good health.

Steve

By design, a router creates a lot of dust. The neighbors have no clue whether I was working on wood or those pads, lol. Last time I made speaker rings (wood), I worked in the street because I don’t want that crap blowing in my garage.

-Todd