Driving down to work on the motorway, pretty much peeing it down the whole way, was sticking to the speed limit (or thereabouts), but was finding that the brakes were extremely unresponsive, it felt like there was nothing happening until I pressed much more firmly on the pedal, almost as far as it would go. Have never experienced this with any other cars in the wet, is this a trait of the Octy RS or do I need new pads or something? The car is 2001, bought from dealer only 3 weeks ago, surely they would have checked everything before selling it to me?

Driving down to work on the motorway, pretty much peeing it down the whole way, was sticking to the speed limit (or thereabouts), but was finding that the brakes were extremely unresponsive, it felt like there was nothing happening until I pressed much more firmly on the pedal, almost as far as it would go. Have never experienced this with any other cars in the wet, is this a trait of the Octy RS or do I need new pads or something? The car is 2001, bought from dealer only 3 weeks ago, surely they would have checked everything before selling it to me?

Sounds like you had a fine layer of water on the discs.....I think fitting grooved discs reduces this or just brake a bit then release and then brake again.

Sounds like you had a fine layer of water on the discs.....I think fitting grooved discs reduces this or just brake a bit then release and then brake again.

That's exactly what I ended up doing, it was the only way to bleed speed off, it took about half an hour into the journey to realise because up until then I was driving in traffic and under braking felt normal. Almost had a couple of hairy moments later on as well, apologies to the Cooper S driver that I almost took out!!!

When I had my Furby serviced a month ago they said they inspected the brakes through the wheels as the alloys made it easy to do.

I wonder if it's possible for you to take pictures of your brakes for anyone which experience to comment on. (Yes, I have no knowledge of what they should look like so I'll volunteer everyone else :P )

Does anyone know what angle might be best for that sort of photo?

Did the 2001 model have the progressive brakes?

SImilar to aquaplaining. A shimmy of water sits in there. Not unique to us.

Best bet in the wet is to gently left brake or lift and gently brake a bit every now and again. Or if braking, stab and then stamp, or stamp and pray Grooved do help a lot, other than cold pads I don't think I've had it since changing.

If nothing else it encourages everyone to keep there distance.

Just weird that I have never experienced it with any other car i have owned, even ones with drum brakes at the back...

Drum brakes actually suffer less in the wet.

Go out for a test drive sometime when it's dry and do a good number of full effort stops (away from any other cars or hard objects) to warm the brakes up and deglaze them - they may be a lot better after that.

aside with any issues with the brakes.....the fact that you was still doing the speed limit or there abouts in what sounds like very wet conditions..may of had something to do with it... driving at ~70-80 in the wet and expecting the car to stop the same as if it was dry im sorry but its just not going to... try changing your speed according to the conditions next time...

Joel

aside with any issues with the brakes.....the fact that you was still doing the speed limit or there abouts in what sounds like very wet conditions..may of had something to do with it... driving at ~70-80 in the wet and expecting the car to stop the same as if it was dry im sorry but its just not going to... try changing your speed according to the conditions next time...

Joel

Bear in mind this was on the motorway/ dual carriageway, plenty of cars goin much faster than me I can tell you, I was generally keeping twice the usual distance as well, apart from when a cooper s stuck itself to my rear bumper before I pulled over...

aside with any issues with the brakes.....the fact that you was still doing the speed limit or there abouts in what sounds like very wet conditions..may of had something to do with it... driving at ~70-80 in the wet and expecting the car to stop the same as if it was dry im sorry but its just not going to... try changing your speed according to the conditions next time...

You should have told me that before I was screaming down the Autobahn in the wet, carrying another three people.

Car didn't stop at all! :eek:

Speed, additional weight, rain - you know how to deal with them separately but you get caught off-guard so easily when you add them all up. Suddenly, surprise, surprise, the brakes don't work. It's only then that you find out how quickly you will lose any margin of error if you have all of it combined.

Fortunately I was trying stop in a rest area with nothing else for miles around...