After 45k miles, of predominantly Autobahn and fast / winding A road use the brake pad wear indicator for the fronts came on. Initially I was only going to replace the pads, but quite a deep groove 2 - 3 mm made me think twice.

Anyhow to cut a long story short, I was looking at upgrading to some high-end after market pads / discs, but some of the prices quoted were crazy. Whilst looking, got a good deal that was too good to miss at TPS Yeovil (thanks again guys!), so went for OEM, as the 340mm set up are probably the best standard brakes I've ever had on any vehicle.

When stripping down the fronts, the brake wear sensor had in fact been triggered from the grove in the disc fouling on the plastic where the sensor attached to the pad, creating a circuit.

Rears were only 50% worn, but discs were heavily corroded from 18 months living 500m from the south coast.

All pretty standard VAG set up, but rears need M16 Spline bit to get the rear calliper off the hub (didn't have one of these in my 300 piece socket set, and didn't need much of an excuse to buy some). I wouldn't like to fight the person responsible for torquing this bolt up at the factory though - they must have massive guns (or the windy gun set to 11!).

After some thermal shock loading and some grunting more akin to ladies tennis, they were eventually free, but the independent rear set up does not afford much room to attack seized bolts, especially using a trolley jack. I also needed to dust of the calliper piston winder - I normally suffice with the body of a 7 or 8 mm spanner, but these were very stiff too.

All in all, relatively straight forward and the braking performance is excellent after only a few miles bedding in.

Edited 23 July, 20169 yr by Black_Sheep

Wow Matt 45k miles, only got 22k miles outta my pads still, that's about right, pads every other set of tyres.

How often do you see me in the Skoda Tony? That's why they lasted that long... And some of the journeys were turn right onto Autobahn at Dortmund, brake for Calais only!

So the front discs are 340mm? And rear discs?

Ha! Yes those rear splines are frequently the cause of bad language in many workshops.

Rears are 272mm diameter / 10 mm thickness. Part # 1K0615601AA.