Hella 355112142 Rear Brake Rotor 282mm | VW & Audi

The Hella 355112142 is a rear disc brake rotor built for the VW and Audi platform that runs a 282 millimeter solid rear disc. If you drive a Golf, a GTI, a Jetta, a Passat CC, or an Audi A3 from that generation, this is very likely the exact rotor sitting behind your rear wheels right now. It is a one-piece gray cast iron casting, zinc coated on every surface, and it is sold as a single rotor so you can replace one side or both.

Here is what matters about the size. This is the 282 millimeter outside diameter, 12 millimeter thick solid rear rotor. Solid, not vented, because the rear axle on these cars doesn't do the heavy lifting the front does. The center hub bore is 65 millimeters and it uses the 10 x 112 wheel bolt pattern, so it drops onto the hub the way the factory part did. No spacers, no adapters, no drilling. You pull the caliper, pull the old disc, and the new one seats flat against the hub face.

The zinc coating is the part people overlook and then wish they hadn't. Bare cast iron rotors start surface rusting almost immediately, and the parts of the rotor the pads never touch, the hat, the edge, the inner faces, turn orange within a week of sitting in a driveway. That rust looks ugly through an open wheel and it can flake into the caliper over time. The zinc layer on this Hella disc keeps the non-friction surfaces clean and gray for the life of the rotor. The pads wear the coating off the braking surface in the first few stops, exactly like they should, and everything else stays protected.

One thing to get right before you order. This rotor is sold as a single. Brakes work in pairs, so you always replace both rotors on an axle at the same time. Put a fresh rotor on one side and a worn one on the other and you'll feel it, uneven braking, a pull, maybe a pulse through the pedal. So order two of these for the rear axle. It's cheap insurance and it's the only correct way to do the job.

While you're back there, plan on fresh pads too. New rotors and old, glazed pads don't bed together well, and you give up a lot of the stopping performance you just paid for. Match the disc with a quality rear pad set, clean the caliper slides, and check the caliper piston retracts smoothly. On the cars this fits, the rear caliper piston usually needs to be wound back in with a turn-and-push tool rather than just pressed, so have that on hand. If the car has an electronic parking brake, put it in service mode before you open the caliper.

Bedding matters on any new rotor. Once it's bolted up, do a series of moderate stops from around 40 miles per hour down to 10, back to back, without coming to a full stop and without sitting on the brake at the end. That lays an even layer of pad material onto the fresh cast iron and sets the rotor up to run quiet and true. Skip it and you're more likely to chase pulsation and noise later.

Who's this for? Mostly it's the owner doing a normal maintenance interval. Rear rotors on these cars tend to wear a little faster than people expect, because the electronic parking brake and the rear bias in modern stability systems put more work through the back pads than the old days. When the rears get below the discard thickness, or when you feel a light pulse under braking, it's rotor time. This Hella disc gets you back to a factory-fresh rear end without the dealer markup.

Hella supplies brakes as original equipment to a lot of European assembly lines, so this isn't a bargain-bin casting. You're getting a rotor cut to the factory dimensions with the coating and the metallurgy to match. For a routine rear brake refresh on a VW or Audi, it's an easy call. Order two, grab a rear pad set, and you've got everything the axle needs.