They aren't critically low yet and the light hasn't come on telling me to change them but I thought I would just do them and avoid overheating and warping the rotors due to excess heat from thin pads.

This is what $290.00 buys you at the Audi dealer. Front pads are about twice as big as I am accustom to seeing.

<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakes1.jpg">


<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakes2.jpg">


<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakes3.jpg">

 

Are these OEM pads? That means the Q7 has brembos on them

 

Yes, the Q7 has Brembos.......you can see it is stamped into the Calipers.

 

That's awesome! No wonder, the brakes are great

 

Also Q7 is 4L0, they are 7L0, does that mean they are common VW parts?

 

Yes, the Q7 (4L0) shares brake part numbers with the Touareg (7L0)

 

Moving to Hawk Ceramics, though, and only $233 for all four corners. Besides the Touareg, the Cayenne S uses the same pads.

 

The Q7 brakes are outstanding. I always have to compensate my braking force when I jump into the family mini-van.

 

can you post the part numbers for the pads and sensors? Is this something my local brake shop could do?

 

I had a extremely mechanically inclined friend helping me (or maybe it was me helping him) and he has done LOTS of brake jobs and said that the Q7 design was extremely simple and intuitive.

He mentioned the rotors were larger than those on his F-150.
<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakereplace1.jpg">

Basically, you remove the bolt that spans across the center of the caliper and the pads lift out. Due to brake dust (Q7's have a brake dust problem?) the bolts required some extra effort to get them out. Once out, you lift the pads out, disconnect sensors and repeat in reverse. I didn't actually replace the sensors due to this being my first time working on brakes with sensors and that the parts counter guy said they came with them (which they did not) so I just reused the old ones.
<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakereplace2.jpg">

A few shots of before and after pads....
<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakereplace3.jpg">

Glad I got 51k out of them.
<img src="http://idisk.mac.com/ben_rush/Public/q7_brakereplace4.jpg">

In a nutshell, it was a easy install and extremely satisfying not having to pay someone else to do it. I will note that Audi didn't mess around with the brakes on the Q7. Huge Brembo pads, the front calipers had 8 pistons each and the rear had 4 pistons each. Remarkably the pads front and rear wore almost evenly, which has never happened on other vehicles I have owned.