brake squeal!

[ak007kb]

i have 7500 miles on my r8 and its recently started to squeal, but lately its really bad, so bad im afraid to even hit the brakes. I brought it to Audi service to check it out, they called me back telling me that brake squealing is normal on high performance car, but our Aston, m6,targa, ferrari, and mclaren, have not had any brake squeal, now both the ferrari and the mclaren both have carbon/ceramic brakes, so i dont know if that changes anything. then they tell me the brakes my have glazing and that they are going to charge me 500 for that, because i have had the car for more than 6 months, so the warranty has worn out, really?. and just now, i get anther call saying that they did the front brakes, but there is also some squealing in the back, and thats going to be another 500, wtf. and he also tells me that the squealing will never truly go away... is this normal, or are they just trying to milk me for money without really doing ****... thank u for ur help

[imclueless]

Mine squeal at low speed halts - this only started after a very vigourous track day....

[Black Eagle]

ak007kb,
The same happen to me. The dealer want to charge me 400 for taking the galzing off, but they said that it will come back again later.
I will change my brake pads to a different brand, that should re surface the disc.
I think that still will be cheaper to wait and get new pads.
Another thing that I'm going to try is to go to the track this weekend, they said that it should remove the glazing.

[toecutter]

Mine has done it since 500 miles. Only when slowly stopping. I complained and the dealer gave me an Audi pamplet that said brake squealing was normal. My service manager told me that he wished Audi would just fix the problem instead of printing up brochures.

[desperado]

4200 miles; brakes are silent.

[swansailor]

Had the problem when the car was new. Took delivery in winter. No noise after first few hundred miles or when brakes had warmed up. After 6500 miles I noticed it came back but the weather is really cold again!

[willyjp]

Does it make any difference to wash the car? My A6 used to squeal very loudly when it accumulated a lot of pad dust. Just turning the hose on the front wheels to thoroughly flush out the brake dust (and then drying them, of course, with a few gentle stops) would drastically curtail the brake noise. Dealer eventually found some non-stock pads that were better. It has a lot to do with pad characteristics and there are alternatives.

[MotherTucker]

Washing the wheels/brakes won't do much, my experience shows. Something that usually works for at least a while is to rotate the pads to the other side of the same rotor. The different surface profiles between the pad and the rotor tends to disturb the vibrations that cause the noise. It had a big effect on my car just recently, and it's not very difficult to do. There's a thread here on the details of changing brake pads.

mt

[08R8]

Mine squeal at low speed halts - this only started after a very vigourous track day....

^^^ What he said ^^^

Mine squealed for approximately 70 miles after each track day I've done. They have settled back in to being quiet.

[toecutter]

I think the cold weather has something to do with it. It's getting quite cold in Idaho now and mine are terrible in the morning but better after warming up or later in the day. A series of hard stops will keep them quiet for a couple of days. Washing the wheels doesn't seem to do anything.