A5AFTERB5

The brakes have been installed but not without some drama.
The "original" plan was for the 2Bennett Stage 2 "GT" kit. This is a 6-Piston Brembo caliper over a 350mm 2pc. rotor and SS lines. I had won a raffle/donation from our Quattro club, for $1,000 off the kit. 2Bennett is 2 hours from my home so it was worth the drive.

When I got over to 2Bennett, around 9:40AM, they started immediately to size up the 6 piston Brembos and discovered very quickly that the S5's carrier is completely different! They could NOT get the correct alignment when mounted... the rotor just interfered. The best we can determine is the S5 knuckle/carrier isn't the same P/N as the A5. Since the hat on the rotor is the only variable, we were almost going to just call it right there and go home with no brakes, but there was one option, and this one bumped the price up another $900. Their "Stage2 RS" brake system. The alignment was exact but the rotor is now 365mm and the caliper, 8 piston. We mocked it on the car and it lined up perfectly, however, when we placed the OEM wheels back on, they would not clear. The only thing they had in stock were 15mm hub-centric spacers from H&R (later, I figured we only needed like 5mm to be safe.) This is $75 a pair but if I wanted to get this done, this would have to go in. Of course I needed 2 pairs since I wanted the rears to be proportionally the same width out (30mm total added track front and back.)

Oh, and just to be sure my day was complete, they had no lugs bolts that were just the right length; mine would be too short with the spacers. The answer: lugs. So now I need 20 lugs and 20 19mm nuts; these were NOT cheap either but in retrospect, I really like studs since it makes re-mounting wheels a lot easier.

I won't get into the final "bump" in cost, but I will say it was substantially more since the RS kit is $1,000 more than my original GT kit.

In any event, Andrew Bennett, in addition to applying the raffle discount, applied additional discounts for being patient and essentially allowing my A5 as a test bed on what will work on the A5.

So without further delay, here are the pics:

Mock up (note the spacer is also mounted):


8 Pistons; note diameter differences; this system uses 4 pads per caliper.


365mm, "cast" holes, not drilled.


Yikes, my car is pretty damn dirty.






Initial impressions; I think the vehicle needs more bleeding. I kinda of rushed them due to the time constraint I had; remember, I am 2 hours from home and at 4:00PM, when the completed everything, I needed to get back home for dinner guests! They pressure bled the unit as quickly as possible but only the fronts and while it "seemed" they got the bubbles out, I think there may have been just a bit more in the calipers as it was spongy still. Now I am using a street compound but I can tell that once I got the brakes activated, scrubbing speed seemed a lot easier to do.

A5AFTERB5

update:

After 4 days of use, I'm finding I can start pushing the brakes. I will attempt to bleed the lines this weekend and hopefuly perform the first stage of actual "bedding" of the pads (i.e. 60-10mph firm braking, twice in succession, followed by 10 minute drive/cool-off) From all indications this system sheds speed very quickly. I'm finding I don't need nearly as much pedal effort to haul it down.

There was a small puddle of brake fluid on Saturday morning on the driver side but upon inspection, they seemed to come from the area of the brakeline where it makes a 90 deg. bend towards the caliper. They had vinyl wrapped the lines as their standard procedure so my guess is, some fluid was trapped there. I tried to tighten the hardline and SS line nuts but they were already firmly installed so I didn't push it any further. Banjo bolt was dry as a bone . Took some Brake Kleen to the lines and tried to spray out as much as I could without taking off the wrap. Have not seen any more drops since.