Ray Calvo

Sorry for the repost, but thought that possibly this got archived before most had a chance to see it. Due to the wide complaints regarding squeal, wanted to help out as many as I could.<p>Several folks have commented on excessive brake squeal in their A4s. I started geting some in my Avant recently; have advocated doing some hard braking to eliminate it. Well, it does work!<p>With stock pads, my suspicion has been that mild braking causes the brake pads to glaze, and then cause squeal. I had been driving my Avant rather mildly for about 2 months (due to recent run-ins w/ Smokies; nuff on that!). At the end of coming to a dead stop, was getting some brake squeal. Eliminated it in the following fashion.<p>Pick an empty level road with little traffic (esp. behind you). While driving about 40MPH in 4th (Tip owners recommend putting tranny manually in 4th), I applied brake moderately meanwhile applying gas to hold car at steady speed; brake application was heavy enough that needed nearly full throttle to hold speed steady. Hold this for about 8 seconds, release brake, drive steadily for about 30 seconds, then repeat. After this, brakes were totally quiet and have remained that way for past two weeks.<p>Note, this was on 98.5 Avant with totally stock brakes. <p>

G

Is there a technical explanation to why doing this would work?

AGaur

It worked for me!

Ray Calvo

From what I know, mild braking builds up a "glaze" deposit on the pad surface. Hard braking use heats up pad enough to burn it off. Similar concept to break-in period, whre you have to heat/use pads carefully to burn off resins and compounds created by the manufacturing.

KostaT

I think you're right-on here. I complained about brake squeal at the 10K service and the dealer did what is called a "brake modification". According to my service rep, all they do is grind the pads down a bit.<p>kosta