toomanymc

Thanks for the write up! I’ve had several VW’s prior to my Audi’s and have definitely collected a bunch of VAG specific tools, luckily they are generally not expensive and once you have them they work on all VAG cars.

I can’t recommend enough to download all the service manuals from Erwin. The DIY’s out there are helpful but I reference my service manuals for everything I do now and it makes things so much easier. Best $35 I’ve spent.

https://erwin.audiusa.com/erwin/showHome.do

Catawba72

Great post. Thank you.

knsaber

yeah don’t tell my wife I needed new tools haha

knsaber

you mean disconnect the brake lines from the upper control arm? It’s necessary because it’s a hard metal brake line and there’s no way to pull the calipers out without doing so.

knsaber

not a bad price considering some specialized tools for this issue costs 4x more, and also heck of a lot cheaper than quickjack solution. I’ll give it a go next brake service.

TJK

this car requires removal of the brake calipers in order to change the.brake pads alone? Or were the rotors replaced?
not trying to be annoying- just want to understand. On every car I have worked on, calipers can be unbolted as needed to gain access to the pads, without removing them entirely. Getting the rotors off for replacement sometimes necessitates caliper removal entirely, and disruption of the hydraulic brake lines. But pads alone? Usually there is enough flexibility in any lines local to the caliper to just leave them there or hang them on a hook while you replace pads in any fixed part of a caliper. Pad replacement almost never requires disruption of the hydraulic lines and system bleeding afterwards.

knsaber

you are absolutely correct on the process of how all cars should have brake pads replaced. Audi is basically the same except they love to add extra steps in between any job that annoys the F out of you. Hell, the rear dumb shocks and front wheel hub have impossibly tight electrical connectors you have to fight with before you can continue with your DIY. What do those wires do anyways?

unbolt the incredibly tight 21mm nuts to remove the caliper, BUT before you can slide it off the rotor, the line connecting the caliper to the soft brake line… is a hard metal line! To add an additional step, I had to go out and buy an ultra low profile T50 Torx to remove the nut bracing the hard line to the control arm. You’re not disrupting any brake fluid, you’re only loosening the clips that hold the brake lines against the control arm. Technically it’s a triple square nut that requires ultra low profile. Nobody tells you this in DIY videos.

now with the hard line free to move around, you can slide the caliper off the rotor and hang it up with a hook and continue with regular pad replacement procedure. At least this was my process on a SQ5. Rear calipers are way easier.

see pics from another user’s post. Poor guy didn’t have the DIY videos to watch back in 2019.

https://www.audiworld.com/forums/q5-...-fail-2973371/

TJK

okay thanks! So in your original post, when you described having to bleed the brakes and using a Motive auto-bleeder tool, you didn’t really need to bleed them; you did it because you wanted to, I guess. I don’t mean to belabor the point; just noting that bleeding the brakes isn’t necessary when you’re just changing brake pads.

knsaber

You're correct. I don't want to scare you from possibly trying these DIYs yourself! But it really helps to have the right tools on hand unlike me and needing to buy from Amazon and waiting another day.

huntpsu1

Love that Jack suggestion. That will be a much better solution than my current setup for changing wheels. I currently use the combination bottle jack/ jack stand to use the pinchweld placement for my SQ8, but because of the bottle jacks height, I still need to raise the wheels.