A4 Quattro - Shuddering Brakes

[Drew Adamson]

Hi, I've just handed my Avant Quattro in to the dealer with shuddering brakes. The car was purchased on 19th April 2017 and has  7400 miles on it. They've told me I need new discs and pads on both front wheels due to extreme pitting. I'm more than shocked. This is not just a car with brake problems, it's an Audi, which would fail an MOT virtually out of the box. I had parked the car up for a couple of weeks whilst in hospital. The shuddering wasn't there when I parked but happened right away as soon as I drove it again. I don't use it for track days, in fact the hardest braking has been done by the car itself 3-4 times on pre-sense. With my previous cars of various makes I've had 20,000 miles on a set of pads and have rarely had to change discs over 20 or so vehicles. Has anybody else had issue with brakes at such low mileage?

[Magnet]

Hello Drew,

Sorty to hear of your issue.

If you think about this logically then even if the discs are pitted then the brakes should not judder much, although they might well be noisy after some lack of use until, the surface corrosion wears off.

Such brake associated juddering problems are usually caused by 'warped' discs and the only way to assess this properly is to get the disc 'run out' measured with a dial gauge - no dismantling required apart from taking off the wheel. 

My action with this would be to drive the car for about 100 miles with gentle to normal braking and see if the shuddering lessens. If not, then get the discs checked independently as above. 

One question :- where/ how do you get your car cleaned? 

Kind regards,

Gareth.