PhillyVance

sushistrip

I managed to get the rotors and pads swapped out. There was a failed mention of how god awfully difficult it is to put new guide pin bushings in (the one with the white plastic ring) lol. I managed to get it in using two screw drivers, I'm guessing there is a special tool for it.

Anyways, I can't seem to find information on where to place jack stands. The jack point is obvious, but where do you place stands on the same corner you are jacking up?

PhillyVance

DId you raise it on the mmi? I used a 2k pound jack, I take the wheel off and set it underneath the car where I am working. I only do one side at a time and with doing breaks there is no reason to be under the car. I still have nightmares trying to find a 9mm allen wrench. I went to 5 different stores including harbor freight and tractor supply, Autozone, PEP Boys. No one had it, I had to borrow one from my friend who is a nissan mechanic.

sushistrip

That's pretty much what I did. Jacked up the corner and left the jack in place. You absolutely have to get under the car to remove the caliper bracket bolts (or at least under the rotor to get leverage), 144ftlbs non-accessible from the wheel well. But, I "soft" placed jack stands everywhere incase my jack failed. Better to damage the car and not my ribcage 😊.

My local autozone had one 9mm socket, apparently it is a common size for caliper bolts.

PhillyVance

I didnt take my rotors off. After I take the wheel off I turn the steering wheel to expose the caliper. It was before the summer that I did this. My Autozone has this 6ft wide by maybe 10 ft tall section of various sockets. If they had the 9mm it wasnt long enough. I have an S8 now and my breaks squeal when they get hot. I am going to replace the pads in December and I am not looking forward to it. I just got done doing the spark plugs.

PhillyVance

Watching a video published May 12, 2018 on changing front pads on an A8, within 26 seconds the mechanic mentions he had trouble removing the caliper bolts and had to spend 40.00 on special Matco 9mm hex socket that is long enough. 9mm hex are not found in most sets. I am dumbfounded that someone would call a 9mm a common tool.

sushistrip

You misread my post. I said it is a common size for caliper bolts, not that it is a common tool. As I said, my local autozone only had one. It was juuuust long enough for the pins.

PhillyVance

Thanks for clearing that up for me. What pads did you go with? And the guide pin bushings, where did you get those? I am looking at the EBC red stuffs but I dont know if it comes with the shims on them.

sushistrip

Pads and bushings from audi. https://parts.audiusa.com

Nermb

Maybe the way I did it the first time was wrong, but I didn't need a 9MM hex head for the job. All you have to do is take out the caliper bracket bolts on the back of the hub (I believe 21mm bolt or 22mm I don't recall) and you can take out the pads and put the new ones on there without taking the caliper off the bracket. Then you can just mount the whole caliper back on as one putting in your new bolts (or reusing old ones with some loctite if you happened to not buy new ones). Of course, this is assuming you pushed the calipers in already while caliper was mounted using a flat head screw driver or something you could put between the pad and rotor to help push in the rotors. I did this as I changed my rotors too I don't know if it's a good idea if your planning on not changing rotors as it might scratch them up, though you don't necessarily have to put the leverage tool that you use on the face of the rotor.

This method was used on the 4.0T 380mm brakes not the S8 or smaller 356mm brakes.