Brake pads Mintex or Tesla
In short: support your local motor factors, and buy Mintex brakes and pads. I've a 107 and the Mintex pads/brakes have been brilliant.
I've got a set of Mintex ones, reasonably cheap and work well for the street.
After 70K miles of fun driving, I finally replaced my front brake rotors and pads...3mm left on the pads LOL. I got Zimmermann Rotors($180) and Mintex pads($45) and couldn't be happier. In fact, this set-up feels a lot better than the OEM bite and feel plus the massive reduction in brake dust.
I recently got a pair of pretty rusty 325 calipers for £50 (mine are the smaller ones from a 316) and sandblasted them back to clean metal. Then painted with high temp paint and rebuild kit £30 (pistons, seals, guide pins, bleed valves etc). I was pretty happy with the result which cost me around £100 for the pair. I then went with mintex discs and pads and a full set of braided brake lines my mate had. Full refurb prolly cost me £300 and are significantly better than they were but I don't think they will be as good as a 4 pot setup.
I’ve always used Zimmerman rotors and Mintex pads, and have yet to find a better combo. I’ve tried Brembo, Stoptech, Bosch, but nothing has pleased me like Mintex [pedal feel, stopping power, no noise, very low dust [especially when used on drilled rotors]].
I did Redbox pads on my B5.5 Passat with 312 rotors, and I loved them. I skimped out when I first did the upgrade and went with CARQUEST pads and absolutely hated them. Maybe that's why I liked the Redbox so much....
What type of maintenance do they need? Can you get parts for them (say brake pads) easily?
Mintex is a step below the OEM Jurid/ATE/TRW pads in terms of friction coefficient. Mintex is an upgrade when it comes to dust. Right now, running Akebono Euro Ceramics... I won't come to my verdict until winter.
Mintex Red Box pads are crap - the company changed hands a few years ago and quality has sucked since with some folks experiencing large chunks of pad material just falling away.
I had a set of Mintex Red Boxes on my '98 GTI-VR6. Other than producing less dust (or a less-visible dust), I thought they were garbage. The stock pads stopped and felt better.
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