All of us make errors, proper? Yesterday within the waning hours of daylight after combating a automobile undertaking for about 5 hours, I broke my automobile 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 aspect entrance brake caliper. And the humorous factor is, I wasn’t even engaged on the automobile’s braking system in any respect, I used to be putting in entrance reducing springs. It was all going so effectively, proper up till it wasn’t.
Perhaps 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 perhaps it’s all going to be a shock, I’m unsure. I’ll make one other submit 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 giggle about my fuck up.
I’ll be sincere, I used to be feeling fairly good about this undertaking and the way easily it was going. I’d struggled slightly with the motive force’s aspect, however the passenger aspect went collectively fairly simply as soon as I’d realized the tips from the primary aspect. The educational curve had a pointy fall off. The one minor hiccup I had through the set up course of was once I was undoing the strut prime nuts on the motive force’s aspect 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 seek out and my magnet wasn’t sturdy sufficient to seek out the wrench once more. I suppose it’s a sacrifice to the wrenching gods.
So, how did the caliper break? Properly, you could know that to be able to get the knuckle low sufficient to extract the strut meeting, you must undo the 24mm CV axle bolt. As a way to do this you must cease the meeting from turning, and there are a couple of methods to try this. Usually you’d do that with the automobile on the bottom and the burden of the automobile 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 simply too small to permit the 24mm socket via, in order that received’t work for me. One other methodology is to have a pal stand on the brakes so you possibly can apply the mandatory torque to the bolt. My spouse was round and amenable to serving to, however as a substitute of bothering her I made a decision to go a 3rd route. I jammed a quarter-inch extension into the vanes of the aspect of the rotor and torqued towards that.
That’s not the dumb half. The dumb half was once I forgot the quarter-inch extension within the rotor. After checking and double-checking that the whole lot 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 bought within the automobile to reposition it for “completed” photographs.
Once I sat within the automobile and fired it up on the automobile’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 automobile again in reverse. After initially binding, the automobile shortly broke unfastened and I used to be rolling, however my brake pedal strain felt bizarre, so I finished, put the automobile in park, and bought out once more.
I’ll admit I didn’t instantly know what had gone mistaken, however I knew one thing was mistaken. I bought down on the bottom to go searching beneath the automobile for a forgotten jackstand or one thing that will have sure up towards the automobile. 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 happening and my excellent plan of getting out for an attractive photograph shoot within the gloaming of the afternoon was shot via.
Properly, 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 recognize that feeling when the whole lot 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 can be tough to weld correctly, so I’m not getting away and not using a substitute caliper. I suppose that is going to be a pricey restore.
After a sizzling bathe to wash the suspension gunk off of myself, and the despair out of my mind, I set to work. After confirming I’d be capable to bleed the brakes myself and not using a 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 ought to be accessible for pickup later at the moment. This unimaginable fuck up solely actually value me about $160 for a reconditioned caliper, a four-mile Uber experience to select 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 automobile 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 will repair our errors.
