The stock pads on my 3.6 4-motion were made by Pagid and were very sensitive and dusty. I changed out the fronts only to Akebono Euro Ceramics and I like the feel much better. Plus, they don't dust at all.
Best Brake pads for Volkswagen Passat
Akebono Euro Ceramic has great cold bite, even in cold snowy weather. The downside? It lacks a "linear" feel.
Adam's front slotted rotors, Stoptech Performance front pads.
I bought a VR6 4Motion wagon for my mom 4 years ago, and it's still running great. The brakes are a bit overboosted, and are very grabby, but once you get used to it, it's actually not bad at all.
aftermarket pads will do that. I had the same problem on my passat, put in OEM pads and no more rattle. it was annoying as hell every little bump or crack in the road. The reason they supply those \"anti-rattle\" clips is because the pads ARE NOT made to oem specs. Only slightly oem specs and you get the play in the pad to bracket clearance like the pad is not tight in there. Those clips take up that space. I have used pads from just about every manufacturer, bendix, ate, wagner, ebc, monroe, bosch, beck arnley, raybestos. All not made to OEM specs. The only pads I have found that are close or good enough to oem are akebono but they tend to squeel if you glaze them from hard stopping. Cheap pads gets you cheap pads.
My 2001.5 GLS V6 5-speed needs new rotors and pads. I purchased 4 Meyle rotors (fronts and rears) and Mintex pads.
I used ATE pads, ECS Slotted Front Rotors/plain faced rears, and did a brake flush with ATE Type 200 fluid. Now that my brakes are good and bedded, I can tell there's a significant improvement especially in the rain.
At low speeds, ASW uses the ABS sensors and brakes the spinning wheels, which will affect the life of the front brake pads (at least, that's how I understand it).
You wanna avoid mintex red box these days. The passat pads have a slight problem with burning up under hard braking.
Now as far as brakepads go, stay away from Mintex Redbox and go with PBR/Axxis Deluxe Plus or Metal Master pads. I had really bad experiences with Mintex pads, and I'm currently running Axxis Ultimate pads on my W8!
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