Lost a rear brake pad!!!

[NathanR]

Okay, through laziness I ended up in this situation...  last Friday my rear brakes started grating, Saturday <1 mile always making a noise and Sunday I moved off my drive and my rear right wheel locked up. I set about ordering new rear brake pads through Eurocarparts click and collect for Monday. Usually most cars I have had the sound was a warning but no... Driving the 4 miles home on Sunday night I saw sparks flying from the wheel and then smoke so I stopped and doused it in water. managed to get the car home. Monday, walked 4 miles to Eurocarparts for pads, found I only had three upon dismantling the system and the piston on the rear right was worn down. replaced pads but still spongy. Tuesday walked 3 miles to halfords for a bleed kit and brake fluid, !Removed! that all over the drive... caliper was blowing it out past the piston. Tried alot of online places, around £69 for a reconditioned unit with one to two days delivery, scrap yards taking the &#33;Removed&#33; with quotes of around £101. Euro car parts had one for £108  and GSF had one for £109 with online discount applied... GSF was the closest so I took them up on that and then noticed they offered a £41.40 surcharge for the old unit. (Euro car parts also do this) and took the old unit off and walked another 3 miles. GSF were brilliant, compared the old unit to new, removed the surcharge and I was back on my way home. Fitted and then bled the brakes (after (not tight enough brake hose) incident) Surprised, after all this it only took around 500ml to bleed the system and restore the full brake power. I never knew you could throw a brake pad and let the piston drive into the disk and cause a fire... but hey ho... Audi ownership...

[Magnet]

Hello Nathan,

An honest opinion would agree with your first few words. To ignore inspections of braking systems to a point where pads wear below 3mm is asking for trouble. Having said all that, the fortunate outcome is that only your wallet and shoe leather has been damaged on this occasion. 
When did you look at the front ones last Nathan? 
Apologies for being direct. 
Kind regards,

Gareth. 

[Steve Q]

10 hours ago, NathanR said:

Apologies Gareth for not engaging with you sooner, I guess the main reason was that it simply didn't seem worthy of a reply to be honest. You missed my entire point that rear pads can go from making a noise to throwing out pads from the caliper in less than 3 days or (15 miles)which i have never experienced or even heard of before. I'm sure with your superior knowledge you understand the fronts have a wear sensor giving you a good deal of time to get them replaced whilst the rears dont. When you replace the fronts you should replace the rears at the same time (Audi thinking, despite a bias to the front) so I suspect a previous owner only replaced the fronts when the warning light illuminated. A visual inspection of the rear pads through the wheel showed at least 5mm of meat on the outer pads. Can you guess what caused the offside inner pad to wear faster than the rest? I fixed that whilst i had the caliper off. Thankfully the email alerts let me know you were waiting with baited breath for a response to your "Direct" post, personally I would have classified it as a waste of 5 minutes of your time TBH  it served no point or purpose other than to try to make you feel manly on the internet... the second post reinforced it. Other than that I have no interest in having a battle of the brains with the unarmed, enjoy your evening.

 

It always baffled me why the rears never had a brake wear sensor. Was the uneven wear on the pad caused by a sticking piston in the caliper? 

I also didn't know Audi states you need to change front and rear pads at the same time, especially as you say the front wears faster. Just another money making con.

Is your A4 Quattro? As that's the only reason I can think of for changing pads at the same time. I appreciate my A6 is older but I might have to look through the service information to see what that says.