Project S3 (I say project loosely...) Part II

LSPIII said:
This is quite clearly not a standard upgrade path haha. Renault Clio 197 Brakes on a 2001 Audi S3. I can see a lot of reviews talk about the brakes on the 197 being great, but my primary concern is that I will be carrying a fair bit extra weight. I'm a bit of a noob with all this stuff, so is it really just a case of bigger is better on brakes? The Kit I've purchased was sold as a full kit. The mounting brackets are clearly custom made. The Clio brakes are 312mm as standard and the brackets I've been given as well as the disk mean I will be using 323 mm. I take it the size difference shouldn't be a problem for the caliper? Argh!! I hate getting caught out like this.

Edit: The pad size incidentally is 125 x 71 x 15 (all in mm) if it makes any difference
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Nah its fine, long as the mounting brackets are correct and provide the correct offset in terms of disc size and disc offset from hub then you should be fine.

try getting the disc inbetween the pads (like i have done in my pic) check it doesn't hit any of the slider pegs on the caliper.

They are totally worth fitting i just couldn't figure what car they had come from, 4 pot brembos should be almost the same regardless of what car they've come from, with bigger pistons i guess you will get more clamping force than the standard brembos. The main issue is finding some you can make a bracket for to fit the car, all the hard works been done :)

bmh.01 said:
The renault ones for the clio 197 and megane 225 both bolt straight through into the hub, theres no mounting lugs on them to mount like a normal sliding caliper carrier. Although renault ones will have the renault logo cast into them next to the LH and RH markings along with a renault part number. So these just might be from the same family.
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Interesting when i was looking i couldn't see anything from the french side of things or eve fiat etc that would fit with an adapter plate, far as i could see it was either porsche or buy an aftermarket full kit.
 
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bmh.01 said:
I'd agree with that as they look the same as the ones on my megane 225.
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I'm pretty confident that although these have no Renault logos on them, they are the same part. Do you mind me asking what you think about the brakes on your car?
 
LSPIII said:
Well I couldn't find any codes on the Brembos but I did find a code on the pad. It turns out these are the front calipers off a Renault Clio 197. Now I'm wondering whether they're worth me putting on. I know nothing about these calipers, so does anyone have any ideas/suggestions?
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Yeah I mean they must be crap, from a Clio innit man.
 
Would anybody be able to pass any comment on whether these are likely to perform equal to or better than the LCR calipers?
 
Larger pistons means the brake balance will be shifted forward, and you may find you get a longer/softer pedal. How much larger are they than standard?
 
Dogbreath said:
Larger pistons means the brake balance will be shifted forward, and you may find you get a longer/softer pedal. How much larger are they than standard?
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Well the standard brakes use a quote "sliding piston" technique so they're effectively only one piston I believe.

Screw it, I'm going to put them on and see what happens! :D
 
:D

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And the image which shows best how big these mothers are. Now for the bed-in :D

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No need for any more words really. I'll update in a couple of weeks once the pads have had a chance to bed in correctly and I can say for sure how much better they are!
 
Have you actually looked at the effect of changing the piston sizes from the OEM displacement to the fancy looking Brembos.

It may be a case where you have actually reduced total braking performance by messing up the brake balance / 'overpowering' the mastercylinder.

They look nice though :)
 
I was just about to say the same as Simon. You will probably need to either get higher coefficient of friction rear pads or larger rear brakes, then use a brake pressure adjusting valve so you can adjust the fluid pressure for the front and rears before you will be able to slow down quicker.
 
I can't say I've done the math no, but what I do know is that 99% of the time, those who upgrade the brakes on an S3, have only ever replaced the fronts. I have read up on other forums where people have tracked S3s or Leon Cupra Rs etc where they have the Brembos up front (ok, so normally they are the LCR Brembos rather than these particular calipers) with upgraded pads etc. Even dedicated track toys stick to oem disks and pads at the rear. Something to do with the fact that the rear brakes on these cars do just about naff all by all accounts! I'd love to quote a figure, but I've heard it's something like 70-75% bias to the front, don't quote me on that though!
 
To be fair the majority don't think about brake balance amd keeping the car close to the ideal braking curve. Even with it being 75% bias the rears are still doing 25%. If the rears are only half as effective then you have lost 12.5% of your braking force.
 
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