All of us make errors, proper? Yesterday within the waning hours of daylight after battling a automotive venture for about 5 hours, I broke my automotive in a method that I’ve by no means seen earlier than. Absolutely a consequence of fatigue, chilly, laziness, and rush, I unintentionally 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 decreasing springs. It was all going so nicely, proper up till it wasn’t.
Possibly a few of you who’ve accomplished 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 put up concerning the suspension work as soon as I get a possibility to check out my new springs, however for now we’re going to sit down within the second and snigger 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 a bit of with the motive 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 motive force’s facet and my 13mm ratcheting wrench fell into the black gap of abyss on the prime proper nook of the above picture. Wherever that gap results in I can’t appear to seek out and my magnet wasn’t robust sufficient to seek out the wrench once more. I suppose it’s a sacrifice to the wrenching gods.
So, how did the caliper break? Nicely, it’s possible you’ll know that with the intention to get the knuckle low sufficient to extract the strut meeting, you’ll want to undo the 24mm CV axle bolt. To be able to do this you’ll want to 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 load of the automotive on the tire stopping the spin, then pop off the wheel middle cap and crank away. The middle bore of my OZ Rally wheels is simply too small to permit the 24mm socket by way of, in order that gained’t work for me. One other methodology is to have a buddy stand on the brakes so you’ll be able to apply the required 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 obtained 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 assumed 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 free and I used to be rolling, however my brake pedal stress felt bizarre, so I finished, put the automotive in park, and obtained out once more.
I’ll admit I didn’t instantly know what had gone incorrect, however I knew one thing was incorrect. I obtained down on the bottom to go searching beneath the automotive for a forgotten jackstand or one thing that may 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 excellent plan of getting out for a phenomenal picture shoot within the gloaming of the afternoon was shot by way of.
Nicely, nothing to do however assess the injury. Jacked again up, wheel again off, I noticed the gronked brake caliper and my coronary heart sank. You already know that feeling when all the things goes so nice after which one thing completely devastating occurs? It one way or the other 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 no alternative caliper. I suppose that is going to be a expensive restore.
After a scorching bathe to wash the suspension gunk off of myself, and the despair out of my mind, I started working. After confirming I might have the ability to bleed the brakes myself with no Volkswagen/Audi pc, I poked round to seek out which of the numerous auto components shops in my space had a brake caliper accessible close by. It seems NAPA has one in a warehouse on the town, and it must be accessible for pickup later right now. This unimaginable fuck up solely actually value 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 feel it labored. All of us make errors. We will repair our errors.
