All of us make errors, proper? Yesterday within the waning hours of daylight after scuffling with a automotive venture for about 5 hours, I broke my automotive in a means that I’ve by no means seen earlier than. Absolutely a consequence of fatigue, chilly, laziness, and rush, I by chance snapped the mounting ear off of my Audi’s driver facet entrance brake caliper. And the humorous factor is, I wasn’t even engaged on the automotive’s braking system in any respect, I used to be putting in entrance reducing springs. It was all going so nicely, proper up till it wasn’t.
Possibly a few of you who’ve carried out suspension work on a MQB chassis Audi A3, Volkswagen Golf, or Jetta already know the place I’m going with this. Or possibly it’s all going to be a shock, I’m unsure. I’ll make one other submit in regards to the suspension work as soon as I get a chance to check out my new springs, however for now we’re going to sit down within the second and chuckle about my fuck up.
I’ll be sincere, I used to be feeling fairly good about this venture and the way easily it was going. I’d struggled just a little with the driving force’s facet, however the passenger facet went collectively fairly simply as soon as I’d discovered the tips from the primary facet. The educational curve had a pointy fall off. The one minor hiccup I had through the set up course of was after I was undoing the strut prime nuts on the driving force’s facet and my 13mm ratcheting wrench fell into the black gap of abyss on the prime proper nook of the above photograph. Wherever that gap results in I can’t appear to search out and my magnet wasn’t robust sufficient to search out the wrench once more. I assume it’s a sacrifice to the wrenching gods.
So, how did the caliper break? Nicely, you could know that with the intention to get the knuckle low sufficient to extract the strut meeting, you could undo the 24mm CV axle bolt. With the intention to do this you could cease the meeting from turning, and there are just a few methods to do this. Usually you’d do that with the automotive on the bottom and the burden of the automotive on the tire stopping the spin, then pop off the wheel heart cap and crank away. The middle bore of my OZ Rally wheels is just too small to permit the 24mm socket via, in order that received’t work for me. One other methodology is to have a buddy stand on the brakes so you’ll be able to apply the mandatory torque to the bolt. My spouse was round and amenable to serving to, however as an alternative of bothering her I made a decision to go a 3rd course. I jammed a quarter-inch extension into the vanes of the facet of the rotor and torqued in opposition to that.
That’s not the dumb half. The dumb half was after I forgot the quarter-inch extension within the rotor. After checking and double-checking that all the things was correctly torqued and again the place it wanted to be, I cleaned up my instruments, put away my rolling stool, bolted the wheels again on, eliminated the jack stands and wheel chocks, and acquired within the automotive to reposition it for “completed” pictures.
Once I sat within the automotive and fired it up on the automotive’s 100-horsepower electrical motor it initially wouldn’t budge. “Oh, proper,” I believed to myself, “I placed on the electrical parking brake.” So I turned off the brake and popped the automotive again in reverse. After initially binding, the automotive shortly broke unfastened and I used to be rolling, however my brake pedal stress felt bizarre, so I finished, put the automotive in park, and acquired out once more.
I’ll admit I didn’t instantly know what had gone unsuitable, however I knew one thing was unsuitable. I acquired down on the bottom to go searching beneath the automotive for a forgotten jackstand or one thing that might have sure up in opposition to the automotive. Then it hit me like a sack of bricks. As soon as I remembered what I’d forgotten I simply began laughing like a maniac in my driveway. The solar was taking place and my good plan of getting out for a gorgeous photograph shoot within the gloaming of the afternoon was shot via.
Nicely, nothing to do however assess the harm. Jacked again up, wheel again off, I noticed the gronked brake caliper and my coronary heart sank. You realize that feeling when all the things goes so nice after which one thing completely devastating occurs? It by some means hurts worse, proper? There’s nothing to be saved right here, sadly. The forged aluminum could be tough to weld correctly, so I’m not getting away with out a alternative caliper. I assume that is going to be a pricey restore.
After a sizzling bathe to scrub the suspension gunk off of myself, and the despair out of my mind, I started working. After confirming I might be capable to bleed the brakes myself with out a Volkswagen/Audi pc, I poked round to search out which of the numerous auto components shops in my space had a brake caliper out there close by. It seems NAPA has one in a warehouse on the town, and it must be out there for pickup later immediately. This unimaginable fuck up solely actually price me about $160 for a reconditioned caliper, a four-mile Uber journey to choose it up, a quart (or much less) of brake fluid from my stash, and a shiny chrome vanadium quarter-inch extension. Oh, and that 13mm wrench that’s a part of the automotive now. And some hours of labor.
My neighbor’s cat stopped by on the finish of the day to cheer me up. I believe it labored. All of us make errors. We are able to repair our errors.
