All, as you have seen with my posts, I am a long time Audi owner, and currently an A5 (Wife) and A7 (Me :-) ) owner.

I hate it when I call customer service!!!! They talk with you like professional idiots. No wonder JD Powers rates them so low. I get a call on Saturday in response to my "constructive inputs" about the inability to straighten out the "brake dusting issue". They take a near perfect car, and the cherry on the cake rolls off, when dust accumulates so fast on the 20" rims that I paid $1500.00 more for. The dude that calls me up starts with his fairy dust response:

Audi brake dust is all depend. upon the driving habits of the individual drivers
Audi option for ceramics is only on the R models
Audi appreciates your inputs however blah blah blah.

Well Audi, you get it wrong in the smallest of ways. He did manage to squeeze in that, and I quote:

"If you change the brake pads to ceramic, Audi will not honor any warranties from the manufacturer".

Therefore, your screwed partner, enjoy the dust or wipe down the rims every three days. I know that I could wax them to avoid this and maybe make it less, but this should not be!!!! AT ALL!!!!

Bottom line I told him that my JDPowers survey just came in, and when he was blowing me off, I got his attention with my quote:

"Let your management know, and the notes show that I plan on slamming you on the brake dusting issue, and will make it a point to do so"

Bottom line to prospective buyers, I would still buy the cars all over again, and Audi knows we will. But the brake dusting issue is the biggest pain in the *** that I have had to face off with in a car. I keep mine baby's *** clean, and this causes a lot of problems for me perception wise. It takes an otherwise 100% favorable opinion of the cars to a mere 80%.

Finally, I know a lot of you will say that I am over critical on this. I know I am, but I also have a car that you can eat off of the floor (if one so chooses LOL), and therefore a simple fix is warranted here, and the Audi folks fail to recognize this, and just flat out ignore the situation.

That is why they are rated so low in JDPowers, let nobody kid anybody.

LONG LIVE CERAMIC brakes, as all I want to do is stop, not spread the Audi dust all over my rims!!!!!

FYI, read it and inputs welcomed....

 

How are the A5 brakes in terms of dust compared to the A7? My Q7 is equally bad....

 

As a long time Audi owner were you not aware of high volume of brake dust?

If it bothers you that much get your self ceramic pads as suggested. You don't have a warranty on brake pad wear anyway so I don't see what manufacturer warranties you will be voiding?

If that is too expensive of an option buy yourself some Armour All Weel Protectant and spray it on your wheels after their washed. It repels brake dust and road for weeks. Great product.

 

Thanks Mofsteal.......I certainly was aware of it, and expected this to be corrected and missed this in my research. So your ? is good, but you missed my point. If all Audi's have "THIS PROBLEM".....why the hell don't they fix it? Wouldn't you expect a kid with a cough to get medicine and fix the cough? Why wouldn't Audi who created such an awesome machine fix the most simple of problems, the brake pads. They offered the option for their flagship sport machine for the $150K bracket, right?

But, with the above said, and to your second valid point, the ceramic pad switch wouldn't void the warranty. How could I have missed this. Oh, I get it, Audi missed this when they said it would void my warranty. They were "Quick with the BS again"....., quote....."Sir this would void your warranty". :-) My bad for buying the hook, line and sinker LOL!

I will try the armor all immediately and see if the slows down the process. Thanks for that third point suggestion.

I bought this A7....because it is beautiful. Brake dust sux!!!! and it is an "Easy fix" that the car mfg. ignores continually, which is my major issue for such a minor result. Again, like having an Armani tuxedo for the wedding, and wearing converse sneakers after a 10K through the mud......:-)

Thanks for your inputs.

 

Equally as bad, as were my 2 A6's, and A4. All of them have the problem, other than those who opt out for the ceramics on the $150K sport beauty.

Look at the Armor all input that came to us from the other post. I am going to try it next weekend.

 

Well, brake dust is an issue that every german car possess. BMW is the king at that. Rims get soo dark that every time you wash it, you start falling in love with your rims again. Many ppl don't really care about it and audi knows that. Besides the best material outside ceramic brakes does produce this dust mixed with brake oil.

Bottom Line is that you would be wasting your time. The guy at the Audi can say whatever because he ain't paying for it and there is nothing you can do about it to slam audi. Also rim cleaners would be discontinued if brake dust stopped forming. Henc ceramics are way expensive like a high quality solar cell. Government would make lesser money if they switched to green energy eventhough they say blah blah for the sake of environmental safety. It's a debate that would lead to war to be honest and i can keep going on and on.

Some things can never be changed

 

I heard the same complaint about this "problem" from my father when he got his A4. I am on my 6th Audi, all of which produced large amounts of brake dust. The BMW 550i I had for 6 months before getting the A7 (god, I disliked that car) also produced copious brake dust. In my mind, it is not a "problem"; it is simply physics. You want more friction for better braking on a big, fast car, you wear out the pads faster and get more dust.

Same thing happens with tires. I'm lucky if I get 10K out of the stock rubber. That is not a "problem" with the tires. That is related to the fact that I drive fast and hard in these cars, on tires that are engineered to stick to the road, at the cost of wearing out faster. I could fix the problem with different tires or driving differently. And, I could probably be more diligent with keeping proper inflation pressure.

The car would also use less gas if it had a smaller, less powerful engine, or I drove it differently. Oh, well.

You could fix your problem with different brakes that produce less dust, either ones that are more expensive, like ceramics, or ones that don't stop your car as well. It's all our choice.

 

So you are saying that Japanese cars don't stop well because their brake pads don't produce as much dust as the German cars?

 

My old 2008 4.2 a6 did shed a lot of dust. As a comparison to my current 11 avant, it's like night and day.

I can drive my a4 for weeks on end and there's not near the dust on it as my old a6.

The 20 inch wheel on the a7 is bi-colored, and that does help hide the brake dust. But if you have the 19s, you'll probably see it more.

Brake dust has been talked about a zillion times. You can put a 3m wheel wax on there and several products are on the market to help cut down on brake dust.

I think it's pretty telling how worthless JD power reviews are.

 

Might I suggest:

http://www.swissvax.us/product/SE1055010.html

I'm not saying you dont have a reasonable position, but at the end of the day you have a brake dust problem, and this stuff really helps (based on personal experience on my S5 & Q7 which both suffer from the dust issue.)