Brake pads OEM Porsche or Mintex

I did Redbox pads on my B5.5 Passat with 312 rotors, and I loved them. I skimped out when I first did the upgrade and went with CARQUEST pads and absolutely hated them. Maybe that's why I liked the Redbox so much....

Mintex Redbox are always on my list for Daily Driver pads on VWs. I just started into my 3rd set on my 180k wagon. In contrast, the Mintex are linear, fairly quiet, wear well, are easy on rotors, low dust and can tolerate a bit of spirited driving.

Once the mintex pads had sufficiently cleaned the rotors, the pulsing was gone. Granted, they are much dustier, but I'll take that over the constant pulsing.

MINTEX Pads All Around

If you never get the brakes terribly hot (single high-energy braking events are fine, I'm talking extended periods of track or track-like driving here when I say "hot"), porsche OEM pads work great. If you do run the car under track or track-like conditions, the OEM pads never fade (in my experience), but they do wear out alarmingly fast.

I tried looking at different brands of pads for my 911. Just ended up going with OEM pads. Turns out most people think Porsche OEM is the best stuff and I've learned for many aspects of these cars that is true. This is very different from every other car I owned where you could either get better performance or reduced costs by going aftermarket. With my Porsche I couldn't find a pad that offered better daily driver + some hard driving performance... or was cheaper without sacrificing performance.

I've heard there was in issue with this with mintex pads for the Passat. the red boxes would just start up under high heat

I've already had my 3.2 TT at the track (same brakes) and after the 3rd session (out of 5) the brakes began to fade. Also by upgrading you would also get a weight saving although with these HUGE brakes prob the same (lol). Actually I still think even with these you'd save 20-30lbs for both corners.

I had a set of Mintex Red Boxes on my '98 GTI-VR6. Other than producing less dust (or a less-visible dust), I thought they were garbage. The stock pads stopped and felt better.

mintex reds are WORSE than stock in my opinion....i bought some, and got ride of em a few months later