[200q20v] Furbishing for the Glen

[Phil Rose]

Only a week to go! I installed new rear calipers, rotors and pads the 
other night.  The nice surprise was that none of the fasteners had 
been overly torqued/corroded/etc. The carrier mounting bolts came 
loose nicely and even the brake hose(s) loosened with no problems. 
Both rotors were slightly (0.5 to 1.0 mm) under the "minimum" 
thickness; the pads were worn by about 2/3, but one of them had 
cracked across its center--right down to the backing plate. The 
rubber boots were all intact but the guide pins were very dry on the 
driver's side where someone had had left the boots detached at one 
end. The guide pins cleaned up nicely  and worked easily after 
applying gobs of high-temp brake grease. Once again my home-brewed 
pressure bleeder made bleeding a snap.

The e-brakes' release "action" is clearly stronger now, but not yet 
completely up to the job. There is definitely some "excessive" 
resistance from both cables. The fact that they were almost never 
used for the past 15 months was no help on that score.  However  the 
new calipers can produce enough restoring force to get each cable to 
within about 1/8" of full release. I was suprised to find that the 
cables could be induced to fully retract by a mere gentle flexing of 
the cable housings by hand (no need to hammer directly on the lever 
or use a large screwdriver as with the old calipers.) With some use 
it's possible the cables might loosen enough to work without any 
"help"; otherwise I'll replace 'em.

I also found that the e-brake needed some adjustment (slackening) 
since the cables could be fully released on one side or the other but 
not both sides at the same time. I was able to slacken the ebrake 
cable tension by taking a couple of turns on the adjustment nut-- a 
**deep** 10mm socket, universal joint and 9" ratchet-drive extension 
were needed. I used a 3/8" drive, but 1/4" would be easier. That's 
another bit of maintenance that Audi designers must have stayed up 
nights figuring how to get as awkward as possible, although now that 
I've done it, it's not as hard as I imagined it would be.

Phil
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Phil Rose				Rochester, NY
'91 200q				mailto:pjrose at frontiernet.net