Golf Mk1 brake confusion

[Golfwise]

Diesel brakes have always been worse than petrol brakes.
As the diesel was percieved to be much slower VW in its wisdom put smaller brakes on.
They are both poor really and an upgrade to the larger GTI brakes is the go.

[brackie]

The 1.5 diesel engine was designed to provide the same performance as the 1.1 petrol. (Which isn't very much!) VW would have designed the brakes accordingly which doesn't make a lot of sense to me when the parts were already in the bin and could probably have been used at little or no extra cost. It's better to have over performing brakes than under. Where the diesel wins hands down on the petrol is in engine braking. With a compression ratio of 23.5:1 it slows the car very quickly. I've had 4 Golf Mk1 diesels and have never replaced pads. What has happened with all of them is the "automatic" wedge adjusters just haven't and with the puny rear brakes not helping much all of the braking effort is put on the front....hence poor braking and rapid pad wear. I always adjust the rear shoes manually by tapping down the wedge until the shoes just bind and then backing it off slightly until they're free. The pedal comes up and the brakes work like they should. Even the handbrake!

[gtimk5]

From memory the brake caliper pictured is made by Girling and that design caliper was fitted from mid 78. The offset of the disc is different on the deisel and the pads on the deisel are 15 m/m thick verses 18m/m thick for the petrol model. Thats it, the discs are the same diameter so really the braking should be the same.

[Golfwise]

Diesels have smaller (narrower ) pads therefore brakes will fade (overheat) quicker than the petrol ones therefore one would deduce that the diesel ones are not as efficient as the petrol ones.

[gtimk5]

Oh, and the larger balljoints came out on all Mk1s sometime in 78 too.

[syncro]

There are two types of caliper/disc in Australia.

Petrol and diesel.

An easy upgrade on diesel brakes is to put petrol calipers and discs.

Pads are the same size but thicker on the LS/GLS.

[tassie_euro_mk1]

Thats cool guys.

Thanks for the help. With alot of people theses days changing/upgrading brakes, i just wanted to know what kind mine are. And why the offset was different.


Cheers

[gldgti]

slow down everyone....

i'm introducing another jaw dropper....

diesel golfs came out with 3 kinds of brakes. it is seemingly random, although i think that the division occurs between pre august '79 diesels and post august '79's

the calipers pictured above are the later kind. mine are pre aug '79 and there is another kind which are also pre '79. of the 3 genuine diesels at home in the shed, we have 2 with the post aug 79 brakes, dads has one kind of pre '79 brakes and mine has the other.

all of these utilise the same disks.

the post '79 ones are better than the pre79 ones (of both makes).

pads are interchangable between the 2 kinds of pre'79 calipers, im not sure about the later ones.

amen brakie - self adjusting my bum! those little wedges are a joke!