BrandonLive

I bought a CPO RS5 with 9,600 miles on it last year. I don't put a lot of miles on it, and am just over 18,000 now. A few months ago when I was at the dealer having a different problem fixed, they told me that the brakes were close to being worn out and that I'd need to spend a few thousand dollars to replace the pads and rotors. I was shocked. I'd been having some strange noises from them especially when backing out of my new house's steep driveway (even in the summer), and some odd sticking/lurching when leaving our work parking lot some days which I found disconcerting, but it would go away as I drove. I didn't notice any problems with stopping power, but last week the brake pad warning light went off on my dash, so I immediately called the dealer. I then discovered some forum posts mentioning a factory/delivery issue with warped rotors, and others having premature wear which sometimes was covered under warranty, so I asked about this. I'd previously had a B8 S5 4.2L (sport package + active rear diff) and didn't experience any premature wear issues with those brakes.

The service department at the dealer is telling me that this is expected for the RS5 and that it's rare for the brakes to last longer than this in normal use. The service rep told me that the A5 brakes can last 40-50k miles, the S5 brakes (even the old V8 one) last 30k miles, and the RS 5 brakes last 15-20k unless you have the ceramics. Is this really the expected life of the brakes on these care under normal use?

The other issue is that I've only put ~9,000 miles on the car since I bought it. On one hand, this means I don't know how the original owner drove it, which I understand. On the other hand, the service rep told me that the CPO requirement only require there to be 1mm of pad left (6mm) before the sensor goes off at 5mm on these cars, and that's what was written on the CPO inspection.

Is this all the normal, expected experience in my case? Or are they giving me the run around?

Thanks
Brandon

superswiss

How long your pads last depends largely on how often you use the brakes. The RS5 brakes do not last as long as those on less performance oriented cars. With 18k you are at the lower end, but in the ballpark. My original front set lasted about 24k miles and the rears 27k miles with aggressive weekend driving, 4000 miles of mostly German Autobahn driving, some laps on the Nurburgring and long road trips of just cruising on the highway, but no daily commuting and riding the brakes in stop & go traffic. I also take advantage of engine braking a lot, a habit from my days of driving manual transmission cars, so if I drive aggressively I'll downshift while slowing down, so I don't use just the brakes to slow down. If you commute and find yourself in a lot of stop & go traffic, then 18k miles is about to be expected, especially if the original owner drove in a similar manner. The brake pad sensor doesn't come on at 5 mm, though to the best of my knowledge. 5 mm is still 50% of pad material left. Brake pads start at around 10 mm. Generally it's recommended to replace pads at 3 mm. The sensor comes on somewhere below that.

You may also wanna get clarification on whether it's the rear or the fronts pads. The RS5 has sensors for both. Cruise control makes use of the rear brakes to slow down the car, so if you use a lot of cruise control, the rears could be worn earlier.

You may wanna consider going aftermarket. Also, rotors don't need to necessarily be replaced. All rotors have a minimum width (1-2 mm below original width) and if they are still well above that then you can keep them and just replace the pads, unless they have grooves and other defects. Dealers will tell you to replace them anyway, but if you measure them and they are less than 50% worn, then they are good for another set of pads.

I went aftermarket and replaced my front rotors with ECS tru-float rotors and Hawk HPS pads all around. The front HPS lasted around 30k miles, so a bit longer than the OEM pads and I recently replaced them with Hawk HPS 5.0. I kept the rear rotors and still have the first set of Hawk HPS on the rear. They have about 50-75% life left, but the rear rotors will need to be replaced next time around. They now have a visible lip. With aftermarket brakes you can save some money and at the same time get better performance than OEM.

jschrauwen

-Warped- Brake Disc and Other Myths

eric strauss

I would add that my first front pad and rotor replacement was right around 15K. I was still on teh original rear pad and rotor combo at 34K when I sold the car. Had I kept it, I was going aftermarket with the same setup.

Happy Motoring

Eric

SloopJohnB@mac.com

IMNSHO the pads on RS5 should last 50-60K Miles in normal street use.
My E46 M3 first pad change came at 66K miles, I’m at 106 on the second set and pads are still about 5mm thick! I still have the original rotors!
yes, it’s a 6M but still.
Our 2K 4,2A6 went 15K before pad and rotor change under then-warranty. I note that audi no longer covers brake pads under warranty, how about that?

its a design flaw.

superswiss

Well, let's explore this a bit. For one thing, Eric and I like to canyon carve, so we are definitely not good examples for normal street use. However, even so as I said, mine lasted 24k front and 27k rear. My Hawk fronts lasted over 30k and the rear Hawks have about 33k on them now and are still at 50-75%, again those were not 30k of normal street use miles. So that stands in contrast to 18k for somebody who supposedly drove the car in a "normal manner" most of the time. Perhaps it has more to do with driving style and proper bedding of the brakes or perhaps the OEM pad choice is not suitable for DD in US cities and on highways. Now there are also some big differences between an E46 M3 and the RS5. First of all, the RS5 weighs around 600 lbs more than the E46 and the weight distribution is front biased, so that will most definitely eat brake pads quite a bit more than an E46 and the RS5 uses the brakes during cornering to torque vector. So, not exactly an apples to apples comparison. BTW, Audi now offers two OEM pad choices for the RS5. One is for more aggressive driving and the other one for more normal street use.

SloopJohnB@mac.com

And, yes, and vs red probably makes a difference, torque vectoring, etc. But 66k Miles vs 15k for pads is still significant...I still claim audi brakes design flaw for poor life. I note, however, that normal A5 in 2015 and current 2018 A5 seem much more robust. Our leased A5 4cyl turbo went back at 30k miles with more than ½ brake pad thickness front and rear. I suspect if the car is CPO dealer will have to replace pads and rotors due to ridiculous wear limit on rotors. Don’t get me started..did I mention other than the 30k warranty brake job rotors and pads on our 2K4.2A6 the rotors were still serviceable at 175K! Went through pads though, Hawk HPS. The 2K4.2A6 was closer to the E46 cabrio in weight while the new A5 2018 at 3700 is almost the same weight as my E46 M3 cabrio.
Audi doing better with A5 brakes but not so much with S or RS.

superswiss

It's nearly impossible to draw a conclusion based on mileage of cars from different drivers. Unless the cars were driven by the same person in the same manner, the comparison is pretty meaningless. Eric goes on frequent weekend canyon runs of 100+ miles for example. I don't go quite that often, maybe once a month on average during the summer. I'm pretty sure that with purely daily driving and long road trips, I would probably have gotten a significant higher mileage from the pads. It would be interesting to hear from Eric on how long the brakes last on his current M4, assuming he still goes on canyon runs about as frequently as with the RS5.

SloopJohnB@mac.com

..

mhblaw

Got 65k on the front rotors on my '13 RS5 (gone now for an '18 S5), mostly highway driving and no "canyon carving" as no "canyons" in ND.