RangeR BoB's Audi A4 "Mintex Brakes" page
I got real tired of the dusty factory brake pads. I am going to
invest in a big brake kit soon, but in the meantime, this is a good
stopgap.
The Installation
Compressing the rear piston was a PITA but got done using the
center guts of a gear puller to compress it, while I cracked the bleeder
screw.
Typically I change fluid each year, so this was as good a time as
any. I hooked up my "brake hookah" which consists of a pickle jar with
two tubes thru the lid, sealed to form a vacuum. A short pipe goes thru
the lid and is hooked to a long hose to the 4-cylinder vacuum pump under
the hood. The other hose is immersed in 1" of old fluid. Vacuum draws
air out of the jar and pulls fluid from the bleeder screw.
I found that the Audi bleeder screws are a loose fit inthe threads
of the calipers, so they leaked too much air to drain out the fluid. As a
result, Jay and I then bled the system using his foot power and me
spinning wrenches until clean fresh Valvoline synthetic brake fluid was
coming thru the clear tubing into my hookah.
To the rear pads I applied Permatex blue antisqueel backing to
from a spray can. The pads came naked, with nothing but the black epoxy
paint covering the backing plates.
The fronts I installed with just the rubberized Mintex backing
sheet (already applied) and no spray, and now they squeek a bit at very
low speeds (like 5 mph or backing out of the driveway). I may live with
it until the big upgrade, or I may spend an hour this weekend and pull the
fronts again and spray them with the Permatex goop.
The Results
I bedded in the pads against the new rotors with several 60-5 stos
to heat up the rotors and start to boil out the binder from the pads.
Since the rotors had 22k on them, I had no worries about warping them.
The Results
Stopping feels as good as ever with no untoward behaviour. Can't
remark about dust as the rain has kept things plenty dirty.
On to thoughts of big brakes...