RE: UFO Power

[John Firkins <firkins@eis.net.au>]

It seems to me that the UFO's were an elegant engineering solution to a
problem Audi had with the US market, namely how to get decent brakes & use
15" wheels. In Oz, all v8's came with 16" BBS wheels & when you consider
that the early 80's Ur-q was fitted with 15's, its hard to fathom what
prevented them using 16's everywhere. My guess is the US market. Maybe it
was cheaper to design & make the UFO than fit 16's? I'd bet that its
something to do with keeping the price competitive in the US. Just like the
S4, my struts are from a 95 S4. If this was an Oz delivered S4, it'd have
the 4spot (&pad) ATE calipers & 310mm rotors, just like the A8, but the US
got the g60 found on more lowly Audis, not an S.

Since I've still got a V8 & have done the conversion, here's what I think.

First off, I replaced the UFO's simply because of cost, not performance. I
had no complaints re warpage etc & the car stopped well with little or no
fade when pressed on as hard as I'm going to go on public roads. Here in
Oz, the rebuilt rotors are unavailable & new ones cost A$950, each pads are
A$450

Now I dont know about anyone else, but I object to spending over $2k for a
brake change. So, thanks to the list, I was able to get g60's & S4 struts &
fit them for about $1k less.

The results were less than impressive. I fitted a set of Pagid pads & found
I had nowhere near the stopping power. Over my favorite road, (20km up &
down a good size hill) I could easily fade the brakes to unsafe levels. So
on went the cool carbons (thanks list & Paul Weston). Wow, I got brakes
again! Not long after, I got no rotors.
List to the rescue again, see me with a pair of US $45 rotors & Ned
supplied some real Pagids, now it stops better than original & seems to
have reasonable wear for the street. The same pads with the UFO's would be
better still. It'd be interesting to see what happened to the UFO's after a
good run with the pagids up to temperature, probably need a good cooldowm
period to avoid problems, I expect

As far as unsprung weight is concerned, dont be, the difference was less
than 2kg per side. You'd need to check the archives for the actual
difference (that how much it meant to me)


Cheers

John Firkins