vduc

Thanks for the correction. That's great, even more reasons to get the S4 over hot rodding an A4 as a friend suggested. I'm hoping the dealer can get my trade sorted out so I can get one on order.

Excelsior7

Are you implying that my analysis is incorrect? I don't know very much about the modifications made to brakes for track cars, admittedly, but I stand by my point that for street driving, brake upgrades are largely unimportant. If you can break traction on the tires, then adding bigger/higher friction brakes is not going to help you stop any faster. The principle reason that sports cars have these big fancy ventilated carbon composite brake systems is to prevent brake fade, and you have to be pushing a car fairly hard to actually come up against fading brakes.

I have only driven one vehicle that could benefit from better brakes, and that's a toyota tacoma with oversized, 4-ply tires that are simply much heavier than stock.

primetime

Yes, your analysis if you want to call it that was incorrect.... In day to day driving bigger rotors, better pads, and numically higher piston and better gripping calipers are 100% more effective and efficient in daily driving.... That is a fact!

Excelsior7

Effective how?

The weak link in absolute stopping distance is going to be the tires, and brakes cannot increase the amount of grip the tires have. The only possible way would be that bigger brakes provide a faster transfer of weight to the front tires, but the force effecting that transfer is still the frictional force between the tires and the road, as far as I can discern. Sure, bigger brakes may provide a stronger braking feel for the same amount of pedal applied, but in full-on braking, unless you're running tires that are either really, really heavy or really, really sticky, your tires are going to break traction before your brakes reach their maximum potential.

Me, personally, I don't push a car hard enough in every day driving to have any discernable brake fade. Maybe you do. I perhaps should have said "Track it OR Drive it very hard"

Regardless, I would like to hear what you mean by "more effective."
As I see it, you have more experience in practice than I do. I'm just going off of the theoretical and physical applications, as well as an extensive post on NASIOC that I can't now find about the topic.