They aren't the best brakes I've used, but I prefer to have to apply what I need rather than the over-servo'd on/off braking you often find. Our Octavia is horrendous. A wrongly directed fart in the general direction of the pedal has you heading for the windscreen.

I think they're pretty good, and agree wholeheartedly about over-servo'd brakes- my A3 had that too. I've never found the Fabia vRS brakes to be lacking- and nearly got caught out driving a 1.2 HTP courtesy car .

Change the fluid and then change the pads. If that don't help it's probably the master.

^^^^ what he said. Plus perhaps the vacuum pump or a leaky vacuum pipe?

The brakes on my wifes vRS are cack too. We've had it from new (just short of 20k miles ago) and the brakes were great to start with.

They've got progressively worse as the car has got older.

My thoughts were that the brakes were actually too good for the car- they are never getting used hard enough so are glazing over. Especially when she never drives it hard and most of her miles are motorway.

I've tried the 'repeated hard stops' thing a few times but it doesn't really improve it.

Have just replaced the fluid (as it was two years old) but that didn't make much difference either. They are getting to the point where they can actually be scary, especially when cold.

Any suggestions for improvement or is it just new pads time?

What pads does anybody recommend that are better than Skoda ones then? I've searched the forums and found Tarox and Mintex ones mentioned a lot. I don't want some severe racing pads though, just summat that's gonna stop me at junctions (brown shows up quite a lot on the VRS seats).

Pagid Blue, Ferodo DSPF, Mintex 1144

I might be wrong, but since the materials changed in the friction materials, it seems that hard braking a few times does not seem to sort things out. Someone might know better but it looks like both the discs and the pads need to be cleaned up - or "glaze busted" before any improvement can be expected. I've also been a bit disapointed after replacing discs and pads - even taking into account that the brakes will not be 100% staright out of the boxes! Changing the brake fluid will not have any noticably effect on the "bit" that the brakes provide (especially on ordinary passenger car brakes) - it justs makes the system safer and less prone to fade and internal rusting.

Pagid Blue, Ferodo DSPF, Mintex 1144

cheers, I'll price them up.