When it's raining out and especially when on the expressway where I'm not using the brakes often, I have noticed that my wife's Passat has some pretty severe lag between actuating the brakes and when they actually start to be efficient. It's enough to be sort of unsafe, IMHO.
I've noticed this behavior on all the cars I've ever had to some degree or another. My present ride is an early 90s Honda, and it really doesn't do this much at all. Even so, on other cars I've noticed this as being fairly linear (meaning the brakes have the same feel/response, but just need more effort) and it has always been mild, to moderate, and not scary.
On her car, it is severe. If I'm cruising along for awhile, and hit the brakes, there is essentially NO BRAKING ACTION for about 1 second, and then for the next 1 1/2 - 2 seconds it quickly returns to normal braking efficiency. In fact, a side effect of this is that in that following second, it returns to normal braking drastically enough to slip a wheel (in the rain, sic) if you're not paying attention!
I feel the brakes are in good working order. It never pulls to one side, pads were replaced about 6 months ago (was same before this, and this is the second set of pads), calipers are free, and fluid's been flushed every
2 years. I think this is a function of the rotor material, and even more so, the pad material. Both sets of pads have been OEM.Assuming I'm not the only one, what pads would you recommend to try to alleviate this problem? I don't want to run pads that will squeal, and I don't want to chew up my rotors, so no racing stuff I guess. Maybe just something a little more aggressive? I'm hoping that folks have some suggestions I can try for the next pad replacement.
Thanks, Arthur
P.S. It's the 4-motion sedan, so it's the 5-speed tiptronic, and the 90deg V6 engine, if that matters.