Trying to get smooth brakes when hot? Any help would be great. Sorry for the long story, just a bit bored and wanted to be specific.
I was hammering the crap out of an Aston Martin DB11 the other day and the brakes as standard are pretty good, they do fade quite quickly though understandably with the power and weight of the car. However, I had a bit of a (heart falling out my arse moment) when I came off the motorway and pressed the brake pedal and nothing happened whilst approaching a round about in a £170K car that isn't mine haha
(I think most of us have had that "brakes are on lunch, be back soon" feeling before:grin:)... just managed to stop in time at the red light (no one else around btw, was being as safe as possible with great visibility). However, the brakes were cooked as I had been giving it a beating for a good half an hour.
The reason why I mention the above about the Aston and how it relates to my Golf. When the brakes were fading and running out of puff, they were still extremely silky, silky, silky smooth even when they were catching fire and glowing red, ZERO horrible brake judder. Now I know Aston Martin's are going to be extremely refined compared to a Golf, but I have EBC grooved discs and Red stuff pads which are probably as good as, if not better than the Aston's standard performance steels.
I have followed the exact EBC bedding in procedure but I still get huge amounts of brake judder after say 5 reasonably hard slow downs on the motorway, say 60 seconds between each slowdown/brake to cool them a tad. The stopping power is unreal when they are hot, but the brake judder is horrendous, so bad it feels like the callipers are not attached, similar to snapping a drive shaft or broken diff, but worse. Then when they're cool, they don't judder as much but do feel a bit grindy which I expect from a performance pad.
I want to see if it's possible to get the brakes to be smooth constantly especially when they are fading and hot, as I do want to take it on track this year, but I can't, as it'll rattle my teeth out unless I get it sorted.
Things that maybe causing this - I have spacers on the car and there is a bit of rust between the spacer and the hub. I have tried to clean it, but I'm wondering if this could be a contributing factor. My H&R lowering springs are slightly un-even, one side is about 5mm lower than the other. Importantly, there is a scary dead spot when normal town driving at the top of the brakes and you have to push quite hard and the pedal quite far to get any sort of bite. So my master cylinder could be on it's way out. I have bled the brakes and this made the cold bite better for a bit, but now the cold bite is bad again. The cold bite feels similar to hot brake fade, unless you press really hard then it gradually bites hard, just like hot fading brakes, but they are cold. I get these aren't great when cold, but this is defo not right.
The EBC and red Stuff are crazy powerful and get better the more miles I put on them, but the judder is horrendous when they are hot and the bite when they are cold is dangerous tbh and I am expecting a baby any time now and need perfect brakes. Does anyone have any ideas or recommendation's for the cold bite being crap and the brake judder when hot? Any brake specialist garages around that I could visit?