AP Racing Big Brake Upgrade
 

There are very few off the shelf upgrades to the Brake system for our 8's. MTM, Brembo and AP Racing do replaceable upgrades some of which include larger disks. However they are quite expensive. Within the VAG group there are alternatives from the RS4 or RS6. there are some amongst the 8 fraternity that hopefully will post their experiences here.

I decided after a lot of research to get a bespoke front upgrade to include 6 Pot callipers and 378mm Disks. These were both off the shelf items from AP Racing and I used a specialist Brake Engineering Company, BG Developments in Bromsgrove to design and manufacture the Calliper Mounting Brackets and Disk Mounting Bells to allow them to fit to my car.

For this they needed a Hub and wheel so they could take measurements.
I drove up to visit the facility and delivered a wheel and had a scrap hub couriered down to them from A8 Parts.

My car at the time had some deeply dished alloys on. To my horror I found that I could not go above the current disk size due to the spokes curving back into the wheel. On the advice of Bob from BG and as part of my search for an appropriate wheel I used AP Racings Library to make a template that can be used to establish whether a given disk and calliper combination will clear the rim and spokes on a particular wheel. An example template is here. The template is in the left side of this diagram and using the measurements from the grid on the right a template is drawn up and cut out. Spinning it around the center hub hole on a wheel will tell you if the spokes will interfere with the Calliper.

In the end, I found my wheels at A8 parts and a deal was struck.

Now using the 5555 calliper and a floating 378mm disk, a mounting bracket was machined as were the Bells.

When they arrived they looked like this:-

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c7.../IMAGE_060.jpg

The difference in disk size........

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c7.../IMAGE_068.jpg

During fitting I found out that the brake lines that I had had made up by Goodridge were to short. I sent a line from the car without realising the the flexible hose on our cars mates to a hard line on the calliper. The flexible line on its own was not long enough! :rolleyes:

One fitted this is what I now have....

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c7...s/f068efbc.jpg

Detached retinas are now a possibility. :ROFL:

Mike

cool setup!!+++

Thanks, about to fit a set of C5 RS6 rears this weekend. :)

would be nice to mod the old front brakes and fit them to the rear and have a separate std calliper for the hand break +++ food for thought .... how would that work ?

I would love to upgrade the brakes on my S8, but at the moment, spending 4k or more on brakes is out of the question.

I did a custom 14" front and rear setup on my last Supra, and it was amazing. 6 piston front, 4 piston rear, custom steel hats in the rear to keep the factory parking brake, and it resulted in brakes that would not fade period. And could at will hang folks off their seatbelts. :)

With my daily driver S8, even a package to locate the calipers out further to use larger diameter disks would be a nice upgrade, and should be more cost effective.

Nice setup however! :)

Some photos of my old brakes. :)
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y15...E/PICT0220.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y15...E/PICT0221.jpg

Impressive work