Brake pads Hella Pagid or Bosch

I currently have all four corners replaced with Hella Pagid on a 2018 Golf. I’ve had them on for 2.5 years and 60,000km. Love them just as good as OEM and I believe there are also a OEM supplier to VW depending where they’re sold.

I went with Bosch Quiet off Amazon. I just cruise around and they work fine and are quiet.

Bosch’s Quietcast brakes have never done me wrong. I’ve used them in three vehicles now and had good pad life and performance on a budget. No squeaks, decent life for ceramics.

Honestly for everyday driving the Bosch and centric is a good combo. The powerstop are very grabby and have a bit more stopping power but it’s not worth the extra money, plus long term normal rotors are better. Drilled/slotted don’t have as much durability

Yes to the Bosch/Centric combo. No to drilled rotors on a daily driver.

I had this problem too and I saw in other forums quite a few other people as well. I used Bosch pads too I think (can’t recall right now) but when I compared them to the OeM ones I removed, there was a difference similar the the gaps you pointed to in your pic. Putting the old OEM ones back and the gap is not there. So what I ended up doing was simply added a bit of shim to one side of the Bosch pad to take up the gap and the problem went away. I put the shim only on one side, the side that would be compressed when in reverse. FWIW others have tried other brands of pads and they all seem to have the same issue. Apparently the only ones that don’t are the OEM ones for some strange reason. When I compared mine, it wasn’t the pad backing that was causing the delta, it was the shim.

I'm very happy with Bosch QuietCast pads and rotors.

I went aftermarket with centric posi-quiet pads or Bosch quiet cast. Won’t ever go back to factory.

You'll need decent pads, and ones that can handle a car with a bit of weight behind it, think Pagid RSL29, Winmax W5 or Mintex 1166 if you're not going mad. You'll want to flush out your brake fluid and replace it with something that will take the heat as the tiny brakes on a 325i WILL overheat, its not a matter of if, its a matter of when, good fluid will stop you from boiling it and crashing!

I'd go Pagid because they're a familiar brand. Had some Eicher pads that left really awful dust and were quite loud under gentle braking, lasted 5k miles before I gave up and swapped them out.