Brake problem

[John S. Lagnese]

I have had a problem with brakes gragging. I chalked it up to the car having
had sat before I got it. I cleaned of the pads and calipers. I also bled the
brakes extensively, thinking that that may help. I haven't had a recurrence.
I did check and the hydraulic fluid is quite low. I'm now off to NAPA to get
the Audi equivelent. $30/qt, but I have to have it!
John
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Gratz" <adamgratz at gmail.com>
To: <200q20v at audifans.com>
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 9:59 PM
Subject: Re: Brake problem


John-

I had what sounds like the same issue. Mine  was tied to temperature, hot
days and stop and go traffic brought it on (intermittent). At first felt
like a loss of booster but with a soft first 20% of pedal travel. This
was  accompanied by a slight dragging sensation, as if my ebrake was
sticking.

I was fortunate to pull into my drive while this was happening and put the
car in the air. I found the left front caliper was sticking. aha! I went
inside to get on the Internet and see how far over I would have to bend for
a new caliper. After an hour or so and a little (ahem) entirely unrelated
web surfing, I went back out to lower the car.The caliper had un-stuck.
I didn't give this much thought as I had found a nice set of used A4
calipers and was prepared to do the upgrade (or downgrade). 3 weeks after
the work was done, I was in traffic and had the same problem with a very
noticeable brake drag. I limped home jacked the car up and guess what? Both
front calipers were sticking.
It was about 102 in the LA sun, and the since the things I wanted to inspect
were smoking hot, I pulled out the hose and let it run over the master
cylinder and related area. about 45 seconds into this the calipers opened
up! Now this was a freshly flushed system with good German dot 5 fluid. When
I had flushed it, the old fluid looked smelled and tasted fine. The
calipers, rotors and wheel bearings were new. What the?  I took the master
apart. No obvious sign of wear or groves or rust, sludge and so on. The
seals actually showed almost no signs of age.
I tried to get a rebuild kit and couldn't so I bought a new master in the
box. 2 years and 40k later, no recurrence. My 02cents.

out,

Dr. Gratz

>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 10:15:35 -0500
> From: "John S. Lagnese" <jlagnese at massed.net>
> Subject: Brake problem
> To: <200q20v at audifans.com>
> Message-ID: <002501c5fcd3$6894ac00$0301a8c0 at hppav>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> HI,
> I have been getting an intermittent brake problem. It seems to be fairly
> random. I step on the brakes and it feels like I have no power brakes.
> This
> is as though the car has stalled. I'm going to check for a vacuum leak,
> but
> that wouldn't seem to be an intermeiient problem.
> Has anyone seen this? Any guesses?
> Thanks,
> John
>
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