audiTLC

the rotors. You cannot compress water so until you "burn it off" the pads won't grip.

77'911

Its hard for me to quantify that one since we've moved to a much cooler climate(and more hwy miles) and the brake pads seem to last forever here(and I've used ATE & Textar which are soft). I found in the northeast(read:NJ, etc.) we were eating up pads and rotors like mad(hwy stop and go). The cooler temps that result from the power discs seem to reduce alot of the wear associated with extreme heat.
I agree with qfrog's comment but it never seemed to effect the brakes at all. In fact I found the dust washed out when cleaning the car. You might check into the Boxster caliper upgrade for a serious answer to a brake upgrade on the B5.

Mr. Mom

just tap em every so often ( I do it with my right foot on Hiway). to dissipate the water.

4Driver4

Actually, this happens more on the B5 than any other Audi I have owned.

RKA

I've driven a number of different cars over the years and have yet to experience anything quite as bad as my B5 A4. Tapping the brakes proved ineffectual as well...because water would completely coat the rotor in less than 15 seconds. And the braking delay gets worse when you're talking about borderline freezing conditions!

Audi screwed up with the B5 A4 brakes, and for some unknown reason, nobody has managed to nail their collective a$$es to a wall over this. Lucky for them, not so much for those that continue to drive A4's.

Ebster

I just found these older links on the "nhtsa" website. It appears that more people have complained about this issue than those who actually reported it to Audi. Also, the roadsalt issue cannot be true, since it also happens in the middle of the summer. My new 2001 A4 should have been included in a new report, but apparently, complaints to service managers do not make themselves up to the top of the Audi chain of command.

I don't know, but I think it might have more to do with constant brake pressure than with splash guards. I go through rear brake pads about every 14k miles, but my front pads and rotors did not need to be replaced until about 70k miles. This is highly unusual especially since the front brakes do most of the stopping (even though I drive a 5 speed, and use engine compression to slow me down more often than not). Has there been any talk about ABS and/or ESP issues with regard to this brake fade issue (perhaps faulty programming, etc)?? I could see how more brake pressure correlating to faster brake wear could help solve this issue. (As an aside, as we all know, there is no brake light for the rear brakes. You could be metal to metal and not have your brake light come on.)

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/defect/results.cfm?action_number=PE00016&SearchType=Q uickSearch&summary=true


http://nhthqnwws111.odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/docservlet/Artemis/Public/Pursuits/2000/PE/IN-PE00016-NN.PDF


http://nhthqnwws111.odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/docservlet/Artemis/Public/Pursuits/2000/EA/IN-EA00021-NN.PDF

Mr. Mom

to a certain extent.

I removed the front shields and will take of the rears next time I do the pads/rotors (any time now).


inherent in the system design. Audi now has the pads drag in the rain to reduce it

Mr. Mom

usually about 2 seconds from depressing pedal to any bite.

can't compare to the new one as I have 986 calipers with no shields and will soon remove the back ones too in an effort to reduce tems on the track....

RKA

then one side would clear the water, the car would begin to pull to one side, and eventually when the other rotor was cleared of water, the car would stop pulling to one side.

I've NEVER had this happen in any other car I've driven (close to 1 million miles in the last 15 years on a variety of different cars under every driving condition we've experienced in the northeast). This goes beyond "more noticable", it's a problem with the B5 A4's, period. The only time I've experienced anything close to the B5 A4 was when I drove a cadillac through 10" of standing water...got to the other side and had to step on the brakes a few times to clear the water. The B5 A4 needed 15 seconds on a wet highway to achieve a similar effect.