Replacement Brake Discs & pads?

[Rutters4]

Alright RSers,

Got a bit of a wobble going on when braking from high speed after a fairly spirited late night drive back from the west country the other day.

Think its time for some new discs.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a more economical way of replacing them than the usual Audi credit card raping....?

Cheers fellas.

[RossDagley]

How bad is the vibration? what speed(s) you getting it at?

Looked at getting a skim if thickness allows? Vibration is more likely caused by pad material transfer than actual worn discs. Might be worth investigating

[Rutters4]

Nice one RD.

Over 100mph its noticeable, over 140mph its scary.

Had an advisory on the rear discs when i had it serviced a couple of thousand miles ago so i'll get them changed first.

The 20k mile service was £700 from Audi which i wasn't expecting! My mates C63 was £380 and that hot rod engine must need a few more litres of oil than the RS4....

[RossDagley]

You'd be surprised - rs4 needs 10 litres! BUT - surely you took your own oil in... right? (nearly all dealers allow this and you can save a small fortune doing just that).

If it's high speed judder like that, 140 down to 100 or something, that sounds just like pad material build up. If your discs allow it, a skim will cure it no problem. The guy I have used a few times now is over Cambridge way (Marcus: http://www.discskimmers.com/) so I don't know where you are but... he can do the rs4 discs where most places say they cant/wont. He'll also do some other wizardry to make sure the problem doesn't come back. Will be probably <£200 all in. Combine that with a set of new pads which you can ask him to fit at the same time, and you'll be laughing.

I'd honestly look at the skim option first mate - I stuck a new set of discs on my b7 before knowing any better and within 3k miles the judder was back. Ended up getting the car worked on by Marcus at that point and was never a fault again. Wish I'd just seen him in the first place. Tell him I sent you and he'll do you a deal

[SuprSi]

I've had similar experiences to Ross, I replaced discs that weren't actually very worn before, only to have the judder re-occur pretty quickly as the hub wasn't quite 100% true.

You can sometimes cure it in the short term by doing 6-7 really hard decelerations from 60-70mph down to 10mph. That will heat the discs enough that it'll clear the uneven build up of pad material and transfer a fresh even layer. Just make sure you drive for a couple of miles while using the brakes as little as possible. If it works smoothly for a while and then returns chances are the disc isn't running true. In which case getting the discs skimmed will cure it. And it's really really cheap, I paid £40 per disc at the garage that did my 380mm discs and they're smooth as silk braking from any speed now.