A couple of months ago I popped on new front rotors and pads in my 86 Syncro. I didn’t  really need to, the old ones still had some life in them. But I was given a set of grooved and cross drilled rotors, and while I always wanted to get a big brake set up, and I was skeptical of the merits of the grooves and holes :-), I decided to give them a go.

The rotors are made in California by Brake Performance, and had some sort of coating that’s supposed to reduce rusting on the un worn surfaces.

Brake pads are locally sourced, TWR, I just asked Dave at Dave’s Automotive to get me the ones he uses in stock vanagon brakes.

Nothing to mention on install except the direction of the curved grooves on the rotors.

Did a half assed job with the bedding in routine, you know, all to speed then brake, speed brake , repeat...

Oh boy was I worried, the brakes did not work well. Then after a bit they started to bed in. Over the next couple of days they improved.

I can say the combo is really quite good. Very much better than what I had before. Very nice progressive braking action.

I can’t say if that has anything to do with the rotor design, I’ll guess not. It’s probably mostly pads. And I can’t report on any long hot braking action.
But the brakes are better than I’ve ever had in this van.

Cheers

Alistair